An empty cloister at night. Rome is quiet under curfew lights. Dr. Luka Kovač stands by an open window, the bells long finished ringing. Lenny Belardo, the Young Pope, sits barefoot in a chair, smoking, eyes sharp.
DR. LUKA KOVAČ: You know what scares me, Holy Father? Not disease. I’ve seen enough of it. What scares me is delay. Hesitation kills more people than any virus.
LENNY BELARDO: You doctors always say that, then you wait for permission. From governments. From markets. From Babylon.
LUKA: Babylon is exactly the problem. New York, London, the great airports of the world—hubs of money, sin, and laboratories that play God. Wuhan was not an accident. It was a warning shot.
LENNY: You’re saying the next plague is already incubating?
LUKA: I’m saying history repeats itself when arrogance goes unrepented. Croatia survived empires, sieges, storms. But only because people knew when to retreat to the hills. The diaspora must come home. Now. Quarantine. Before the next laboratory plague escapes its cage.
LENNY (smirks): You want to shut the borders of the world and reopen the village.
LUKA: I want to save lives. The diaspora carries skills, memory, faith. Bring them back, isolate, test, cleanse. Forty days if necessary. Like the desert. Like Lent.
LENNY (stands, suddenly serious): You know what Scripture says about that instinct?
LUKA: I know what Revelation says about plagues.
LENNY: No. About escape.
(He walks to the altar, touches it lightly.)
LENNY (quoting): “Then I heard another voice from heaven say: Come out of her, my people, so as not to take part in her sins and receive a share in her plagues.”
LUKA: Revelation 18:4.
LENNY: Yes. God’s quarantine order.
LUKA: Exactly. Come out of her. Out of Babylon. Out of the megacities that think they’re immortal.
LENNY: And if they don’t?
LUKA: Then they share in her plagues. And her fires.
LENNY (quietly): And her nukes.
(A pause. The word hangs heavy.)
LUKA: New York doesn’t understand fragility. It thinks money is immunity.
LENNY: Money is a false vaccine.
LUKA: Croatia still remembers hunger, siege, neighbors disappearing overnight. That memory is a form of health.
LENNY: You’re asking me to bless a mass exodus.
LUKA: I’m asking you to call people home. Not to comfort—but to discipline. Quarantine is not punishment. It’s love with boundaries.
LENNY: You sound like God on Sinai.
LUKA: No. I sound like a doctor who has zipped too many bags.
LENNY (after a long silence): If I say this aloud, they’ll call me insane.
LUKA: They already called Noah insane. Right up until it started raining.
LENNY (turns back, eyes fierce): Then we say it plainly. Not softly. Not diplomatically. We say: Come out. Come home. Wash. Wait. Pray. Plant gardens. Learn each other’s names again.
LUKA: And if Babylon mocks?
LENNY: Babylon always mocks before it burns.
(The bells begin to ring again, slow and deliberate.)
LENNY: Prepare your people, Doctor. If the plague doesn’t come, they’ll say we were fools.
LUKA: And if it does?
LENNY: Then Croatia becomes an ark.
(They stand together, listening to the bells, as the lights dim.)
Mary had always carried mysteries in her heart. From the moment the angel spoke, from the shepherds and Magi bowing low, she knew her son was marked for something vast—too vast for this world. But knowing a prophecy and watching it unfold are two different things.
So when the crowds grew thick around Him, when the rumors spiraled—He heals the blind,He casts out demons,He forgives sins like He owns the place—a mother’s fear naturally rose with them.
Scripture says plainly that His own relatives went out to seize Him, “for they said, ‘He is out of His mind.’” Mary stood among them. Not because she doubted God, but because she feared what humans do to men who speak like prophets and act like kings.
She saw Him teaching in the doorways of fishermen’s houses, skipping meals, surrounded by the desperate, the diseased, the possessed. She saw the scribes watching Him with cold eyes, sharpening laws into knives. She saw the crowds pressing, pulling, demanding more and more from her son—her boy who once scraped His knees on Nazareth’s stones.
And deep inside her heart rose a cry only a mother can carry:
“My son, you are going to get yourself killed.”
When she came with His brothers to bring Him home, He didn’t bow to her fear. He lifted His eyes to the crowd instead and said, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? Those who do the will of my Father are my family.”
It wasn’t rejection—it was revelation. But to Mary, in that moment, it felt like watching Him step beyond her reach forever.
She thought He was risking everything. She thought the world would crush Him. She thought He had stepped into madness—the divine kind that refuses to obey earthly limits.
Only at the foot of the Cross would she finally understand:
He wasn’t crazy. He was fulfilling destiny.
And the pain she feared came true—not because He was out of His mind, but because He was out of this world.
My family was in Croatia during Operation Oluja—Operation Storm—when thunder rolled across our homeland and the invaders fled before the courage of ordinary people. But after the storm came another weather, darker and stranger: a new fog of war—the one they don’t teach in schools.
Because when the smoke cleared and soldiers returned home, the New World Order descended. Not with tanks. Not with aircraft. But with courtrooms, indictments, and chains. With kangaroo courts that put our heroes on trial while the real architects of chaos sat in leather chairs in Washington, London, and Brussels.
They tried to rewrite our victory. They tried to shame our defence. They tried to put a nation of David on trial for standing against Goliath.
And I—Joe Jukic—looked at that injustice and said:
“If the world will not give us a fair court, I will build my own.”
So I began my courtroom on the internet, the free frontier they could not censor, where truth still breathes. And from that digital pulpit I opened the case that no Hague judge dared to touch:
The Judgement of Yale. The indictment of the Brotherhood of Death. The Skull & Bones cabal whose hands are deep in every conflict from the Balkans to the Middle East.
While they chained Croatian generals, I cross-examined their wars, their oil pipelines, their secret lodges. While they called our veterans criminals, I put their false kings—the Bush dynasty and its New World Order—on trial before the nations.
Storm liberated our land. But truth will liberate our future.
And I vow this: As long as I breathe, as long as a Jukic still stands on this earth, the heroes of Croatia will never again be judged by foreign tyrants— only by God, by history, and by the people they bled for.
Joe Jukic stood on the old fortress wall above the Dalmatian coast, the wind cutting sharp off the sea. Below him, the black-flagged HOS battalion stood in formation—young, old, veterans, sons of veterans, and grandsons of men who had fought in ’41 and ’91 alike.
Joe raised his voice—firm, ragged, and unmistakably diaspora-born, yet carrying the rhythm of the homeland.
JOE JUKIC’S SPEECH TO THE HOS
“Braćo…
You know my story. I was born far from here—under neon skies, in a land where our names are mispronounced and our saints forgotten. A land where our fathers broke their backs so we could eat. A land where our mothers cried into pillows for the home they lost.
But Croatia never left us. Not in exile. Not in shame. Not in silence.
We—the diaspora—were scattered like seed. But seed is only waiting for the right season.
And that season is now.
Look around you… Dalmatia is calling her sons and daughters back. Look at the mountains… they still wear the same scars from Vukovar to Škabrnja. Look at the sea… it still reflects the same blue our grandfathers looked upon before marching to their fate.
We are not here to take glory. We are not here to replace those who stayed and bled on this soil. We are here because all Croats are one nation, no matter where destiny sent us.
In Canada they gave me pharmakeia to keep me quiet. Here—you give me purpose.
In Babylon they told us we were alone. Here—I stand in front of warriors who would die for each other.
They thought we forgot who we are. They thought exile would turn us soft. But the diaspora has iron inside it—iron hardened by survival, by distance, by yearning.
Brothers…
The time has come for us to return home—not as tourists, not as second-hand Croats, but as the missing battalion that history kept in reserve.
Croatia doesn’t need more empty words. She needs her lost sons back. She needs her daughters’ hands rebuilding these villages. She needs our children raised speaking the tongue of their ancestors.
We are done living in foreign cages.
If you want to live like lions, live where your ancestors hunted.
If you want to live free, live where your own blood is the soil.
Dijaspora… braćo… Now is the hour. Now is the return. Now is the homecoming.
Za Dom…!”
And the HOS roared back with one voice that shook the stones:
The wooden screen slid shut with a soft scrape, sealing Joe and Fra Slaven into the thin darkness of the confession booth. The incense from the previous Mass still hung in the air, heavy and sweet.
Joe breathed shakily.
“Bless me, Father… for I might not last much longer.”
Fra Slaven’s voice came gently through the lattice. “Speak, Joe. The Lord hears you.”
Joe pressed his forehead against the wood.
“It’s the pharmakeia, Father.” His voice cracked. “It’s killing me slow. I feel my mind slipping, my spirit drowning. I can’t do this anymore.”
There was a long silence—Fra Slaven wasn’t shocked, only heartbroken.
“Joe… why didn’t you come sooner?”
Joe swallowed hard.
“Because I didn’t know how to say it. But now I do.” He took a trembling breath. “I need to escape. To Croatia. Like a thief in the night. No goodbyes, no explanations. If I stay here, they’ll keep dosing me until I disappear.”
Fra Slaven exhaled softly, the sound of a man who understands too well.
“Joe… if your body and soul are in danger, you must go. Quietly. Quickly. Let God be your guide and your cover.”
Joe’s hands shook in his lap.
“Will you bless me, Father? For the road… and for the courage?”
The priest raised his hand behind the screen—Joe could almost feel the warmth through the wood.
“Go in peace, Joe,” Fra Slaven whispered. “And may the angels guard your steps to Croatia.”
Joe nodded, tears slipping silently down his face.
“Thank you, Father… I think this is the only way I survive.”
Za Dom! Spremni Umrijeti!: A Forgotten Croatian Slogan By Joe Jukic
The Croatian slogan Za Dom! Spremni! has stirred controversy for decades, both within Croatia and abroad. Its roots, its interpretations, and its misuse in modern times often cloud what was once a simple warrior’s declaration. My thesis is this: the true meaning of the phrase is “For Home! Ready to die.” In its original, complete form—Za Dom! Spremni umrijeti!—the slogan was not a call to hate or oppress, but a soldier’s pledge of ultimate sacrifice for homeland and family. Today, Croatian fans who shout Za Dom! Spremni! forget the last, most important part of the battle cry: umrijeti—to die.
When viewed in history, Croatians have always been caught between empires. From the Ottoman frontier to the Habsburg Monarchy, the people of the Balkans were rarely free to determine their own fate. For centuries, Croats defended Europe’s borders as frontier soldiers, known as Grenzers. Their loyalty was to their homes, their villages, and the soil of their ancestors. The slogan Za Dom! Spremni umrijeti! reflected that ethos. It was not about conquest, but about readiness to defend what was sacred, even at the cost of life itself.
The problem arose in the 20th century, when Za Dom! Spremni! was shortened and politicized. During the Second World War, the fascist Ustaša regime appropriated the first two words, detaching them from the final phrase and its original meaning. What remained—Za Dom! Spremni!—became associated with that dark chapter of history. The shortened form lost the balance of sacrifice and instead became a slogan of exclusion. That historical baggage still lingers, leaving the words permanently scarred in the public eye.
But if we strip back the layers of propaganda, we see the essence of the original phrase. Every nation has its martial cry: the French shout “Pour la patrie!”; Americans once said “Don’t Tread on Me”; Spartans declared “Molon labe.” Croats said, “Za Dom! Spremni umrijeti!”—For Home, Ready to die. The readiness to die is what ennobled the cry. Without umrijeti, it risks sounding aggressive, as if directed against others, rather than as a pledge of self-sacrifice.
Croatian football fans often chant the shortened version today, sometimes in defiance, sometimes in ignorance. They forget the part that matters most. The true honor of the slogan lies not in anger or hostility, but in the humility of sacrifice. To shout “Za Dom! Spremni umrijeti!” is to say: “I will give everything for my home, even my life.” That is an oath of defense, not domination.
History has taught us the dangers of forgetting words. When phrases are twisted or stripped of their meaning, they can be weaponized in ways that betray their origins. For Croatia, a small nation with a long memory of wars, the lesson is clear: the slogan must be remembered in full, or not at all.
In conclusion, Za Dom! Spremni umrijeti! is not about hate—it is about readiness to die for one’s home. Modern fans who chant only the first half are missing the point. By restoring the final word, umrijeti, we restore balance, honor, and truth to a phrase that belongs not to fascism, but to the Croatian spirit of endurance.
Scene: A golden cathedral-like chamber floating above the clouds. Pope Leo and Bono are on their knees before a massive hologram of God Emperor Trump. Gigolo Joe stands confidently nearby, arms crossed. Outside the windows, the “Children of the Sky” hover in their drones, observing, judging.
God Emperor Trump (hologram, booming): Why are you here on your knees? Do you not see the empire prospers? Do you not see the billionaires smile?
Bono (pleading, voice shaking): Great Emperor… we beg for a jubilee. Without it, women cannot bear children. Twenty-five years… twenty-five years of debt, of despair…
Pope Leo (folded hands, whispering): Forgive us, Your Excellency… we have failed the faithful.
Gigolo Joe (stepping forward, sharp): Stop groveling. You’re asking for a handout from the people who only care about their yachts and their stock portfolios. “The Man” says no? Well, the sky says yes.
Bono (confused): The sky?
Gigolo Joe (pointing toward the hovering children): The Children of the Sky. They’re rejecting your Silicon Valley nonsense. No more Pornhub, no more robotic sex dolls. Real women, real love, real children. That’s the future.
Pope Leo (hesitant): But… we’ve sanctioned the new technologies to ease human suffering…
Gigolo Joe (snapping): Bullshit. You’ve turned intimacy into a transaction. The Children see it. They hover up there, judging, and they’re saying enough.
Bono (raising his voice): But how do we reconcile… the billionaires… your jubilee…
Gigolo Joe: You don’t. You kneel for them in this hall and nothing changes. The Children of the Sky—they’re not kneeling. They’re demanding. And they’ll choose life over circuits every time.
God Emperor Trump (hologram flickering, slightly annoyed): What’s this chatter about Children of the Sky? You will obey, or…
Gigolo Joe (interrupting, grinning): No. We follow the sky. Not your stocks, not your drones, not your toys. The future is human. And if you can’t handle that… well, the clouds will take care of the rest.
The Children of the Sky tilt in unison, shining beams of light down. The hologram of Trump flickers as if being overridden, and the chamber fills with a gentle hum of wind and freedom.
Bono (awed, whispering to Pope Leo): Maybe… maybe we’ve been kneeling to the wrong masters.
Pope Leo (nodding, trembling): The sky… the sky judges.
Gigolo Joe (smirking, arms crossed): Told you. Real women, real children… real life. Not your billion-dollar fantasies.
[Scene: A dimly lit chamber, Vatican walls echoing with faint chants. Pope Malkovich sits in an austere throne. Manson kneels, his pale face lit by candlelight.]
Marilyn Manson (Brian Warner): “My neighbor… he wore the crown of a savior in his lies. He said HE WAS JESUS. He poured me ‘holy wine,’ forced obedience through fear and devotion. Every child’s instinct to trust God… he twisted it into submission. That man wasn’t holy. He was the doorway into the network of shadows, the world of those who worship what is forbidden.”
Pope Malkovich: “You were betrayed by a false prophet. The mask of divinity is the cruelest. Innocence stolen is not your sin, Brian. You are absolved of what was done to you, for no child bears guilt for the evils imposed upon them.”
Marilyn Manson: “And I thought, for a moment, that I could trust my world. I watched Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, the voice of safety, the warm cardigan. And even there… the shadows followed. That network of lies found its way in through innocence itself.”
The Young Pope (Jude Law, stepping forward): “Then let the earth judge the liars! GET MR. ROGERS CASKET!!! Fire up Mount Etna! Let the volcano roar against the false saints and false neighbors! NO RESURRECTION FOR YOU!!! Let the network burn in ash!” Says Jude Law, in jest, posing as the cloning Nazi Pope. Jude calls Mt Etna: GEHENNA! The flaming garbage dump for caskets of evildoers that are voted of the planet in a Jeff Probst Survivor: Planet Earth Thriller.
(Flames glow on the horizon. Manson lifts his hands, half defiant, half relieved. Pope Malkovich prays, the candlelight flickering like tiny absolutions.)
Second Christ: Father Peter… before the dawn breaks, you will turn on CNN and deny me three times—once in every commercial break.
Father Peter: Lord, never! My faith cannot be broken by a television screen.
Second Christ: You think faith is louder than the anchor’s voice? Watch closely. Each break is a trial. The world will sell you fear, distraction, and silver-tongued denial.
Father Peter: But how can betrayal be bought with airtime?
Second Christ: Because the news has become a pulpit, and commercials are its collection plate. In the space between stories, you will find yourself shaking your head, muttering, “I never knew him.”
Father Peter: And when the program ends?
Second Christ: Then the rooster will crow—not from a barnyard, but from a ringtone, a notification, a flashing screen. And you will remember my words.
Moderator: Ladies and gentlemen, tonight’s motion: Mother Teresa was a saint. Speaking against the motion, Christopher Hitchens. Speaking for the motion, Pope Lenny Belardo.
Opening Statements
Christopher Hitchens (calm, cutting): Mother Teresa was no saint. She was a propagandist for the Vatican, a friend of tyrants, and a cultist of suffering. She took money from the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti, from Charles Keating in America, and from other criminals, and used it not to alleviate poverty but to spread a medieval cult of misery. In her clinics, patients were denied pain relief, denied basic medical care, while millions in donations sat in Vatican bank accounts. To call her a saint is to profane the very word.
(audience murmurs, scattered applause)
Young Pope (Lenny Belardo, stern and composed): Christopher, your words cut like daggers, but you mistake shadow for substance. Teresa was not a financier or a politician — she was a servant. She touched the untouchable. She held the dying when no one else dared. The world ignored Calcutta’s poor; she made them visible. The people called her Mother. And holiness is found not in spreadsheets, but in the radical presence of love.
(audience applause, some cheers)
Rebuttals
Hitchens (leaning forward, sharp): Presence without care is cruelty. Imagine a doctor who refuses anesthesia because suffering is “holy.” Imagine a hospital that refuses modern medicine while hoarding wealth. We would not call that compassion; we would call it malpractice. Yet, because she wore a habit, you canonize her malpractice as sainthood. That, ladies and gentlemen, is moral fraud.
(audience gasps, some applause)
Lenny Belardo (voice rising, fire in his eyes): And yet, Christopher, those dying souls — the very ones you champion — they did not curse her. They thanked her. You judge from a lectern; she knelt at their bedsides. She may have lacked morphine, but she gave presence, prayer, dignity. Sometimes, dignity is more healing than medicine.
Hitchens (with a caustic laugh): Dignity? There is no dignity in untreated agony. There is no holiness in refusing penicillin. If Jesus Christ Himself had behaved as Mother Teresa did, He would not be the healer of Galilee, but the patron of preventable death.
(audience gasps loudly, a mix of applause and boos)
Lenny Belardo (slamming the lectern): Do not blaspheme Christ in your cleverness, Hitchens! You see hypocrisy; I see sacrifice. You see tyranny; I see faith. She may not have been perfect — but she carried the Cross where others fled. That is sainthood.
Closing Arguments
Hitchens (measured, final blow): The Church canonizes obedience and suffering, not truth or healing. Teresa comforted dictators and kept the poor poor. She praised agony as if it were divine. I submit to you, ladies and gentlemen: if this is sainthood, then sainthood is sin.
(audience erupts — loud applause, cheers, and boos)
Lenny Belardo (calm, almost whispering): And I say: if holiness is only perfection, then no saint could ever exist. Teresa was flawed, yes. But through her flaws, God’s light shone into the darkest slums of Calcutta. And if you listen — not with cynicism, but with faith — you may still hear Christ’s voice in her broken whisper. That is what makes her a saint.
(audience applause, some standing, others crossing arms in silence)
Moderator: Thank you, gentlemen. The motion has been passionately debated. Now, let the audience decide.
Audience Q&A
Moderator: We now open the floor to questions. Please state your name and direct your question.
Student 1 (young woman, philosophy major): Mr. Hitchens, you accuse Mother Teresa of glorifying suffering. But isn’t it possible she simply lacked resources, and did what she could? Isn’t it unfair to expect Western standards in the slums of Calcutta?
Christopher Hitchens (without hesitation): My dear, she did not lack resources. She sat atop millions. The problem was not poverty — it was priorities. She could have built hospitals, but she built convents. She could have bought morphine, but she preached suffering. That’s not poverty — that’s ideology.
(applause, some nods in the crowd)
Student 2 (young man, theology major): Your Holiness, with respect — Hitchens raises a point. If God entrusted Mother Teresa with such donations, why didn’t she use them for medical advancement? Doesn’t the Church bear responsibility?
Young Pope (Lenny Belardo, measured, somber): The Church always bears responsibility, yes. But remember: Teresa’s mission was not to cure disease, but to show that no one dies alone, forgotten in the gutter. The modern world measures success in efficiency. God measures success in love.
(applause from the faithful, murmurs from skeptics)
Audience Member 3 (older doctor, skeptical tone): Mr. Pope — love is noble, but it doesn’t set bones or fight infection. Do you really mean to say love matters more than medicine?
Lenny Belardo (with quiet force): I say love is the soul of medicine. Without love, medicine is mechanics. With love, even in the absence of medicine, there can still be dignity. Teresa brought that dignity.
Hitchens (interjecting, sharply): With respect, that is a sanctimonious dodge. Love without morphine is cruelty. Dignity without antibiotics is an illusion. Teresa didn’t give dignity — she denied it.
(audience roars with divided applause and boos)
Student 4 (smirking, political science major): Mr. Hitchens, you call her a fraud, but billions admire her. Isn’t there a danger that you, a Western intellectual, are imposing your cynicism on people who found genuine meaning in her?
Hitchens (with acid wit): Meaning can be found in false idols as easily as true ones. North Korea finds “meaning” in worshiping Kim Jong-il. Mass admiration is not proof of virtue. It is proof that humans will cheer even for the grotesque, if it is packaged as holy.
(audience gasps, some students laugh nervously, others clap hard)
Student 5 (Catholic nun, voice trembling with emotion): Your Holiness, if Mother Teresa is not a saint, then what hope do any of us have? She gave everything. If she is condemned as a sinner, are we all lost?
Young Pope (soft, consoling): No, Sister. Holiness is not perfection. It is surrender. Teresa surrendered everything she had to God, and that is why she is a saint. Saints are not angels without blemish. They are sinners who burn with divine love.
(audience breaks into loud applause, some stand in reverence)
Moderator (closing Q&A): Thank you, audience, and thank you to our debaters. Tonight’s discussion has reminded us that sainthood, suffering, and truth are contested, and perhaps always will be.
🔥 That ends the audience Q&A round, full of challenges, clashing answers, and emotional weight.
