the censored Catholic press had been largely formal, and that he had no control outside his own diocese. When he was appointed NDH military vicar, Stepinac's two deputies, both prominent Ustaše supporters, had already been appointed and it would’ve been virtually impossible for him to remove them. He had accepted Ustaše archives without examining them, and stowed them in the archbishopric, but later handed them over to the Partisans when they came looking for them. He admitted meeting with former Ustaše chief of police, Erih Lisak, who had secretly returned to Zagreb to fight the new authorities, but Stepinac blamed his secretary for the meeting. Alexander states that Stepinac seemed most uncertain when defending himself against the most serious accusations of forced conversions of the Serbian Orthodox population to Catholicism. On 3 October as part of the fourth day of the proceedings, Stepinac gave a lengthy 38-minute speech during which he laid down his views on the legitimacy of the trial. He claimed that the process was a "show trial", that he was being attacked in order for the state to attack the Church, and that "no religious conversions were done in bad faith". He went on to state that "My conscience is clear and calm. If you will not give me the right, history will give me that right", and that he did not intend to defend himself or appeal against a conviction, and that he is prepared to take ridicule, disdain, humiliation, and death for his beliefs. He claimed that the military vicariate in the Independent State of Croatia was created to address the needs of the faithful among the soldiers and not for the army itself, nor as a sign of approval of all action by the army. He stated that he was never an Ustaša and that his Croatian nationalism stemmed from the nation's grievances in the Serb-dominated Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and that he never took part in any anti-government or terrorist activities against the state or against Serbs. Stepinac also pointed to the fact that Yugoslav communists killed a great number of Catholic priests - on 20 September 1945 he already published a letter to the faithful where he brought to light the fact that at least 243 Catholic priests were summarily executed by the communist Yugoslav army for (alleged or real) collaboration with the NDH, with other 169 imprisoned and 89 missing priests. Tomasevich