fra Josip Sopta

Josip Sopta is from an area of Herzegovina in which a majority of the population was involved with the Ustaše Movement during the Second World War. Great losses were suffered there, both during and after the War. Born in 1952 into a poor, Catholic family, he was admitted to the seminary in Split in 1967. In 1971, he joined the Franciscan Province of St. Jerome, based in Zadar. He was later awarded a PhD by the University of Freiburg, in Germany. From 1987 until 2006 he lived and worked in the Franciscan Monastery of the Friars Minor in Dubrovnik and he witnessed the destruction of Dubrovnik during the war. Since 2006 he has been the provincial minister in Zadar, in the parish of St. Jerome.