Belaj 72 The Dissonant Heritage of the Blessed Alojzije Stepinac: The Case of the Silencing of a Religious Tourist Route Marijana Belaj University of Zagreb Croatia Abstract A religious tourist route, the Stepinac Path (Croatia), is a project designed to connect four mnemonic sites related to selected parts of the Blessed Alojzije Stepinac’s biography. The proj- ect follows the European model of the Camino de Santiago. The Stepinac Path includes the reconstruction of several old pilgrimage paths leading to the national pilgrimage shrine of Our Lady in Marija Bistrica. It was also conceived to be incorporated into a wider network of Croatian and international Marian pilgrimage paths. The project was created and is managed by various tourism institutions, with the aim of heritagizing the fgure of Alojzije Stepinac by highlighting several aspects of his life. However, the phrase “the heritage of the Blessed Alojzije Stepinac” is mostly promoted by the Catholic Church in Croatia, emphasizing the religious aspect of his legacy. The complex power relations between religious and heritage politics have pushed the Stepinac Path project’s implementation into a silent phase. Without the proper sup- port of the Catholic Church in Croatia, the project has little public recognition and momentum has slowed. This paper examines the Stepinac Path’s silencing in terms of dissonant heritage policies and heritagization processes in political, religious, and economic discourses and power relations. Keywords: dissonant heritage; heritagization; the Blessed Alojzije Stepinac; the Stepinac Path Introduction A religious tourist route, the Stepinac Path, is a project in northwest Croatia de- signed to revive old pilgrimage routes and to connect places that preserve the Blessed Alojzije Stepinac’s memory. The project was created and is managed by tourism institutions, seeking to heritagize the life and work of the Blessed Alojzije Stepinac by highlighting several different aspects of his life. However, as the project concerns a beatifed member of the Catholic Church in Croatia, it is burdened with complex power relations interweaving between religious and tourism heritagization politics. This has pushed it into a silent phase—the project is hardly recognized by the public and progress has slowed. The framework for my observations is a notion of heritage as a “social construc- tion [and] the manner in which contemporary interests shape and mobilize views of the past” (Madrell et al. 2015, 12). The production of heritage (heritagization) includes and excludes; it is selection, interpretation, and representation of content from the past following the needs and demands of the present, and with the intention of consigning Cultural Analysis 19.1 (2021): 72–87 © 2021 by The University of California. All rights reserved