Roko Romac

Priest. (Petrijanec near Varaždin, 3 December 1905 – Sydney, Australia, 15 March 1970). 

Stjepan Tot Romac joined the Franciscan Order and took the name Osvald. A clerical error by the Vatican Council added an 'h' to his surname, rendering it 'Toth'—a version considered easier to pronounce. He studied theology at the Franciscan University in Paderborn, Germany (1927–1930), and was ordained a priest there on 5 April 1930.

From 1930, he taught at high schools in Varaždin, Našice, and Bjelovar. In recognition of his service to the local hospital and his role in founding a monastery and church in 1935, a street in Bjelovar now bears the name Ozvald Toth. Between 1939 and 1941, he taught at a girls’ high school on Savska Street, Zagreb. In 1941, he became parish priest of Gvozdansko, a mixed Croatian Catholic and Serbian Orthodox village, and also tended to wounded civilians at an improvised hospital in nearby Žirovac. Due to threats from Communist Partisans, Archbishop Stepinac reassigned him in late 1942 to Hannover, Germany, where he provided pastoral care to Croatian forced labourers. In 1944, he moved to Koblenz on the Rhine, staying until the end of World War II.

After the war, Tot was placed in refugee camps in Modena and later Bagnoli. In 1947, he was detained in Regina Elena prison in Rome by British authorities who mistook him for Dragutin Toth, a former minister of the Independent State of Croatia. Listed on Yugoslavia’s “grey list” of suspected war criminals, he was transferred to the Rimini Camp, from which he escaped to Grottamare, where he taught at a local school.

In Rome later that year, two friars helped him assume the identity of another Franciscan, Brother Roko Romac. Under this name, he travelled to Argentina in January 1948 aboard the Andrea Gritti. From that time on, he used the name Father Roko Romac until his death. He later served as a missionary in Bolivia (six years), Venezuela, and then Australia, arriving in Brisbane in May 1955.

His first Australian posting was in Adelaide, South Australia, where he replaced Fr Ivan Mihalić. He baptised children of the growing Croatian migrant community at St Patrick’s church in Grote Street, and ministered to communities in Mildura, Broken Hill, and Perth. In 1957, he moved to Sydney, where he served Croatian Catholics until his death in 1970.

In Sydney, he helped re-establish the Croatian Charitable Society (founded in 1952), edited Dom, Australia’s first Croatian Catholic newsletter until 1962, and was instrumental in establishing St Anthony’s Croatian Catholic Church—the first of its kind in Australia. He also initiated an ambitious but unfinished development at Tumbi Umbi, which was to include a church, school, and religious retreat.