In 2006 the website of the Croatian daily paper Vecernji List reproduced a photo op of this intimate meeting of Pope John
Paul II and clerical-Fascist Croatian leader Franjo Tuđman and his wife. The date: May 25, 1991, just one month before
Croatia and Slovenia announced their secession from Yugoslavia, which was immediately endorsed by the pope, and which
set off the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.