could not write about the persecution of the Catholic Church because to the best of my knowledge such persecution did not exist." Yet, Stepinac viewed the Yugoslav state as essentially anti-Catholic, particularly after the failure of the Yugoslav Parliament to ratify the already signed Concordat with the Vatican, which would have put the Catholic Church on a more equal footing with the Orthodox Church. He was also sensitive to the fact that the Concordat had been vetoed in the Yugoslav parliament partly due to pressure exerted by the Serbian church. The political scientist Sabrina P. Ramet has detailed a range of anti-Catholic aspects to the interwar Yugoslav state, including that King Alexander tried to regulate the religious life of the state, entrenching discrimination against adherents of religious groups other than the Serbian Orthodox Church, and trying to erode their influence by allowing Orthodox proselytising in Catholic areas. Yet Stella Alexander states that both the Catholic and Orthodox churches proselytized in interwar years, with the Catholic Church doing so more openly and aggressively than the Orthodox, especially in Bosnia Hercegovina which had a mixed Catholic, Muslim and Orthodox population. The press was used to accuse the Catholic Church of being pro-fascist, despite the Yugoslav government itself having fascist traits at the time. The government promoted the Old Catholic Church, a rival organisation which has been established when some Catholics refused to accept the doctrine of papal infallibility after the First Vatican Council. Despite the fact that in 1921, Catholics made up 39.3 per cent of the population, and Orthodox comprised 46.7 per cent, the Ministry of Faiths initially allocated fourteen times more money to the Orthodox Church than the Catholic Church. While this was adjusted, the funding proportions remained very inequitable. All of these strategies worked to undermine the role of the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia. The promotion of Serbdom was at the centre of government education policy, with school books promoting the importance of Serbian Orthodox monasteries in Dalmatia while ignoring Catholic ones. The official newspaper of the Serbian Orthodox Church stated that it wanted to achieve the "victory of Serbian Orthodoxy" throughout Yugoslavia. Under the constant pressure from the state and the Serbian Orthodox Church, between 1923 and 1931 the proportion of Catholics in Yugoslavia declined to 37.4 per cent and that of Serbian Orthodox believers increased to 48.7 per cent. The Croatian theologian Roko Rogošić claimed that 100,000