archbishop's brother Mijo. According to Tanner, Stepinac remained naive about politics and the nature of the Ustaše regime. In 1943, Stepinac travelled to the Vatican and came into contact with the Croatian artist Ivan Meštrović. According to Meštrović, Stepinac asked him whether he thought Pavelić knew about the killings of Serbs. When Meštrović replied that Pavelić must know everything, Stepinac went pale and burst into tears. The historian Martin Gilbert wrote that despite initially welcoming the Independent State of Croatia, Stepinac later "condemned Croat atrocities against both Serbs and Jews, and himself saved a group of Jews in an old age home". According to West, Stepinac and the entire Catholic Church remained loyal to Pavelić and the NDH. West states that Stepinac was one of the priests and father-confessors to senior Ustaše such as Pavelić, Budak, Kvaternik and Artuković. In 1944, the NDH Ministry for Justice and Religion proposed, and Stepinac accepted the Order of Merit medal from Pavelić, for "having as archbishop unmasked inside and outside the country the opponents of the Independent State of Croatia" The Catholic Church in the NDH then began to criticise actions taken by the government, and attempted to distance itself to some extent from the authorities. It had no real alternative, given that the likely alternate governments were led by Serb-chauvinist Chetniks or communists. By that time the Ustaše had long lost the support of the great majority of the Croatian people, and most members of the main Croatian prewar party, the Croatian Peasant Party, were supporting the Partisans. Contrary to this, the Church maintained its support of the NDH government to the bitter end. This is demonstrated by the pastoral letter issued after the episcopal conference of 24 March 1945, in which the Croatian Catholic Church maintained its formal support for the puppet state and its rulers, despite the fact that most senior regime figures were preparing to flee the country. The Episcopal Conference was convened at the urging of the Ustaše government, who also had a hand in drafting the letter, issued after the formation of the new, unified Yugoslav government, which had already been recognized by the Allies. According to a later British representative in Zagreb, the papal legate Marcone stated that if he had known of the Bishops' letter of support for the NDH, he would have done everything to prevent its publication (during the war the Vatican recognized