Violence in the Church: Inner-Catholic Conflicts in the Rural Hinterland of the Austro-Hungarian Coastal Region, 1890–1914

The Austro-Hungarian coastal region was characterized by ethno-national divides. The conflicts that arose in Fiume/Rijeka, which was governed by the secular-liberal Hungarian state, manifested themselves differently from those in Trieste, where Catholicism was the ideological basis of the ruling Austrian state. Importantly, Catholicism did not play a unifying role either in the Hungarian or in the Austrian part of the Croatian coastal region and was thus not able to help overcome ethno-national differences. The project of Péter Techet analysed the impact that ethno-national conflicts had on the local Catholic church and religious life in Trieste and Fiume/Rijeka. It investigated what role the Slavophil policies of Pope Leo XIII played in this context and how conflicts in the Austrian and Hungarian parts of the coastline unfolded differently.