Krunoslav Stjepan Draganović (30 October 1903 – 5 July 1983) was a Bosnian Croat Roman Catholic priest associated with the ratlines which aided the escape of Ustaše war criminals from Europe after World War II while he was living and working at the College of St. Jerome in Rome. He was an Ustaša and a functionary in the fascist puppet state called the Independent State of Croatia. Early life Draganović was born in the village of Matići near Orašje, in Bosnia and Herzegovina under Austro-Hungarian rule. He attended secondary school in Travnik and studied theology and philosophy in Sarajevo. Draganović was ordained a priest on 1 July 1928. From 1932 to 1935, he studied at the Pontifical Oriental Institute and Gregorian University in Rome. In 1937, his German language doctoral dissertation, titled Massenübertritte von Katholiken zur Orthodoxie im kroatischen Sprachgebiet zur Zeit der Türkenherrschaft (Mass conversions of Catholics to Orthodoxy in the Croatian-speaking area during the Turkish rule) was published. This later was used by the Ustaše as a justification for forced conversions to Catholicism. In 1935, he returned to Bosnia, initially as secretary to Archbishop Ivan Šarić. World War II and Ratlines Draganović was an Ustaše lieutenant-colonel and the vice chief of the Bureau of Colonization. He oversaw confiscation of Serb property in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was the Jasenovac concentration camp military chaplain for some time until Aloysius Stepinac sent him in mid-1943 to Rome as the second unofficial Ustaše representative. Arriving in Rome in August 1943, Draganović became secretary of the Croatian 'Confraternity of San Girolamo', based at the monastery of San Girolamo degli Illirici in Via Tomacelli. This monastery became the centre of operations for the Croat ratline, as documented by CIA surveillance files. He is believed to have been instrumental in the escape to Argentina of the Croatian wartime dictator Ante Pavelić. Ante Pavelić hid for two years, from 1945 to 1948, in Italy under the protection of Draganović and the Vatican, before surfacing in Buenos Aires in Argentina. Officers of the United States Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) detachment responsible for Austria had this to say about Draganović, who was "employed" by the CIC because they wanted to use his pre-existing ratline (he had been obtaining passports from the Red Cross and visas from various South American countries for Ustaše use, thus enabling their escape from Italia to the Americas): Draganovich is known and recorded as