Altar] of 350 pages, in which is described the entire Stepinac process. Religious education is particularly recently being taught on a large scale. We should do something about this. We could ban religious education. We could ban religious education in schools, but they will then pass it into their churches". On 31 January 1952 the Yugoslav authorities abolished religious education in state-run public schools, as part of the programme of separating church and state in Yugoslavia. In April, Stepinac told a journalist from Belgium's La Libertea, "I am greatly concerned about Catholic youth. In schools they are carrying out intensive communist propaganda, based on negating the truth". Cardinalate On 29 November 1952, his name appeared in a list of cardinals to be newly created by Pope Pius XII; the day coincided with Yugoslavia's Republic Day. (Stepinac was created a cardinal in 1953, but would never go to Rome to receive the red hat and titular church.) Yugoslavia then severed diplomatic relations with the Vatican in October 1953. In 1954, Stepinac received a rare visit from a Swedish journalist, to whom he said, "I tried to save, and did save, thousands of lives", and "[a]s for the massacres in the churches, what could I do?" The government also expelled the Catholic Faculty of Theology from the University of Zagreb, to which it was not restored until the first democratic elections were held in 1990, and was finally formalized in 1996.Goldstein, Ivo. Croatia: A History. McGill Queen's University Press, 1999, p. 169. Pius XII wrote to Cardinal Stepinac and three other jailed prelates (Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, Cardinal József Mindszenty, and future Cardinal Josef Beran) on 29 June 1956 urging their supporters to remain loyal. Stepinac was unable to participate in the 1958 Papal conclave due to his house arrest, despite calls from the Bishops' Conference of Yugoslavia for his release.Miroslav Akmadža, Uloga biskupa Josipa Lacha u crkveno-državnim odnosima 1945.-1962. Tkalčić: Godišnjak Društva za povjesnicu Zagrebačke nadbiskupije 10/2006. On 2 June 1959 he wrote in a letter to Ivan Meštrović: "I likely will not live to see the collapse of communism in the world due to my poor health. But I am absolutely certain of that collapse." According to a 2020 report per the Croatian ambassador to the Holy See, Pius XII originally intended to name Stepinac as the Cardinal-Priest for San Paolo alla Regola, a titular cardinalatial title that the pontiff created