A Discussion with Andrej Cizl, Student, University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia
With: Andrej Cizl Berkley Center Profile
May 25, 2016
Background: As part of the Education and Social Justice Project, in May 2016 undergraduate student Sarah Jannarone interviewed Andrej Cizl, an undergraduate student at the University of Maribor in Maribor, Slovenia. In this interview, he discusses his involvement in the Catholic student group Sinaj as well as his experience as a Catholic in Maribor.
Can you tell me a bit about yourself?
My name is Andrej Cizl. I am 31 years old. I come from a small city called Brežice that is 100 kilometers from Maribor. I’ve lived in Maribor now for 13 years as a student (or non-student—it depends on your interpretation). I studied history here until I found theology, which was like a new world for me. It opened my eyes to a life that I didn’t realize was possible, and my study of history went on vacation.
Where do you live in Maribor?
I live in the Franciscan dorm, which is in the Basilica of Our Mother of Mercy Church. It’s a monastery and a student dorm. It houses 18 students, just men. When the dorm was first opened they did consider making it co-ed, but they thought it wouldn’t be good to have a Franciscan monastery and two genders under one roof since the Franciscan order is quite traditional. They aren’t like Jesuits, who embrace a more modern way of living.
Why did you decide to live at the Franciscan dorm?
At the beginning of my time in Maribor, I lived near the cathedral. I lived there for six years in a house that was owned by the Diocese of Maribor, which is now called the archdiocese. About seven years ago after the global financial crisis hit, the archdiocese started to have financial problems and had to sell a lot of real estate, including the house where I was living.
This was a huge crisis for the archdiocese, a question of hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. They even had to sell the bishop’s seat, though they were eventually able to arrange for the neighboring dioceses in Austria to buy and hold the seat for them until they could buy it back in the future. It turned into a national scandal. All newspapers and TV programs broadcasted news for about two years about this bankruptcy. Many people were shocked, and it’s been said that many Catholics left the Church afterwards.
After my building where I used to live was sold, I needed to find a new location to live, and I really wished to live in a Catholic dorm again. There seemed to be such natural people living in this type of residence, people that I could really have real deep relationships with. One of my friends, who was in the Sinaj student choir with me, told me that he heard that half of the Franciscan monastery would be turned into a student dorm. It was very good news for me.
Is your family Catholic?
I was raised in the Catholic faith from the beginning.
How do you think Catholicism is viewed in Slovenia?
In Slovenia, when it was a part of Yugoslavia and the communist regime had power, faith was very unpopular. It was a very common thing for religious people to be shamed for their faith. When Slovenia became independent in 1991, the opinion started very slowly to change.
Still, many people aren’t able to see the good side of the Church’s mission, or that the Church has done many good things for the Slovene nation and that it contributes to its identity. Many priests and young chaplains were involved in raising the consciousness of being Slovenian, but people today don’t understand that background. They just focus on the negative things and the scandals like the financial collapse of the diocese here in Maribor.
What is your personal experience as a Catholic in Slovenia?
The best way to explain is through my Wikipedia contributions; I write articles for the Slovenian Wikipedia website. Wikipedia contributors in Slovenia form a society that cooperates for the purpose of collecting knowledge, and it is an entity that really has the spirit of a society. However, most of the contributors aren’t religious. Some of the contributors try to avoid anything that is connected with faith, but that’s hard to do because Catholicism has been a part of Slovenian culture for centuries—it’s been a part of the language, culture, and national identity. They try to separate the nation and faith. When I try to contribute theological facts and knowledge there is sometimes a strong reaction from my colleagues. Just as there is in society, the liberal and conservatives emerge.
The most problematic topics that come up are usually the historical topics or personalities of the last 50 years. For example, figures like Gregorij Rožman, the archbishop of Ljubljana during World War II, is controversial. I’ve tried to assert that the communists spread anti-propaganda against him, but many people have been influenced by the regime’s version of history and still have the opinion that he betrayed the nation because he cooperated with the Nazis. The same problem has occurred when I tried to translate an article about the Croatian Archbishop of Zagreb Aloysius Stepinac. There was an argument about the truth, about what the history really was.
Though I think that is somewhat a mini-model of Slovenia, I don’t have a similar experience like that in my daily life because I usually don’t associate with non-religious people in that magnitude, since most of my friends are Catholics.
You’re a member of the Catholic student group Sinaj. What do you think you’ve gained from being a part of a Catholic community like this?
It was a great start to build up my faith. I think it’s the biggest reason that I really started to think about my faith. At the beginning of my involvement, I was not as Catholic as I am today; I didn’t know how to live my faith within a community. I was the boy from the village who didn’t realize that faith could be lived in such a rich way. Coming to university was a completely new world for me, and I was under a lot of stress because everything was new. Even the Catholic way to hang out was different from my parish at home, where there were no young people. I really had to force myself to socialize, and one of the friars really had to push me to go to Sinaj. Now I am a very social person, but I wasn't at the beginning.
How has your involvement with Sinaj enriched your faith?
It’s not so much the lectures or the student Mass, but the fact that I get to interact with this group of young people who give me a fresh sense of my faith.
My name is Andrej Cizl. I am 31 years old. I come from a small city called Brežice that is 100 kilometers from Maribor. I’ve lived in Maribor now for 13 years as a student (or non-student—it depends on your interpretation). I studied history here until I found theology, which was like a new world for me. It opened my eyes to a life that I didn’t realize was possible, and my study of history went on vacation.
Where do you live in Maribor?
I live in the Franciscan dorm, which is in the Basilica of Our Mother of Mercy Church. It’s a monastery and a student dorm. It houses 18 students, just men. When the dorm was first opened they did consider making it co-ed, but they thought it wouldn’t be good to have a Franciscan monastery and two genders under one roof since the Franciscan order is quite traditional. They aren’t like Jesuits, who embrace a more modern way of living.
Why did you decide to live at the Franciscan dorm?
At the beginning of my time in Maribor, I lived near the cathedral. I lived there for six years in a house that was owned by the Diocese of Maribor, which is now called the archdiocese. About seven years ago after the global financial crisis hit, the archdiocese started to have financial problems and had to sell a lot of real estate, including the house where I was living.
This was a huge crisis for the archdiocese, a question of hundreds of millions of dollars in debt. They even had to sell the bishop’s seat, though they were eventually able to arrange for the neighboring dioceses in Austria to buy and hold the seat for them until they could buy it back in the future. It turned into a national scandal. All newspapers and TV programs broadcasted news for about two years about this bankruptcy. Many people were shocked, and it’s been said that many Catholics left the Church afterwards.
After my building where I used to live was sold, I needed to find a new location to live, and I really wished to live in a Catholic dorm again. There seemed to be such natural people living in this type of residence, people that I could really have real deep relationships with. One of my friends, who was in the Sinaj student choir with me, told me that he heard that half of the Franciscan monastery would be turned into a student dorm. It was very good news for me.
Is your family Catholic?
I was raised in the Catholic faith from the beginning.
How do you think Catholicism is viewed in Slovenia?
In Slovenia, when it was a part of Yugoslavia and the communist regime had power, faith was very unpopular. It was a very common thing for religious people to be shamed for their faith. When Slovenia became independent in 1991, the opinion started very slowly to change.
Still, many people aren’t able to see the good side of the Church’s mission, or that the Church has done many good things for the Slovene nation and that it contributes to its identity. Many priests and young chaplains were involved in raising the consciousness of being Slovenian, but people today don’t understand that background. They just focus on the negative things and the scandals like the financial collapse of the diocese here in Maribor.
What is your personal experience as a Catholic in Slovenia?
The best way to explain is through my Wikipedia contributions; I write articles for the Slovenian Wikipedia website. Wikipedia contributors in Slovenia form a society that cooperates for the purpose of collecting knowledge, and it is an entity that really has the spirit of a society. However, most of the contributors aren’t religious. Some of the contributors try to avoid anything that is connected with faith, but that’s hard to do because Catholicism has been a part of Slovenian culture for centuries—it’s been a part of the language, culture, and national identity. They try to separate the nation and faith. When I try to contribute theological facts and knowledge there is sometimes a strong reaction from my colleagues. Just as there is in society, the liberal and conservatives emerge.
The most problematic topics that come up are usually the historical topics or personalities of the last 50 years. For example, figures like Gregorij Rožman, the archbishop of Ljubljana during World War II, is controversial. I’ve tried to assert that the communists spread anti-propaganda against him, but many people have been influenced by the regime’s version of history and still have the opinion that he betrayed the nation because he cooperated with the Nazis. The same problem has occurred when I tried to translate an article about the Croatian Archbishop of Zagreb Aloysius Stepinac. There was an argument about the truth, about what the history really was.
Though I think that is somewhat a mini-model of Slovenia, I don’t have a similar experience like that in my daily life because I usually don’t associate with non-religious people in that magnitude, since most of my friends are Catholics.
You’re a member of the Catholic student group Sinaj. What do you think you’ve gained from being a part of a Catholic community like this?
It was a great start to build up my faith. I think it’s the biggest reason that I really started to think about my faith. At the beginning of my involvement, I was not as Catholic as I am today; I didn’t know how to live my faith within a community. I was the boy from the village who didn’t realize that faith could be lived in such a rich way. Coming to university was a completely new world for me, and I was under a lot of stress because everything was new. Even the Catholic way to hang out was different from my parish at home, where there were no young people. I really had to force myself to socialize, and one of the friars really had to push me to go to Sinaj. Now I am a very social person, but I wasn't at the beginning.
How has your involvement with Sinaj enriched your faith?
It’s not so much the lectures or the student Mass, but the fact that I get to interact with this group of young people who give me a fresh sense of my faith.
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