The Two Souls Weekly is a conservative weekly newspaper published in Karlovac, the theological city of District IX (Decelska). Founded in 1931 by the clerical senator Ivan Franj, it is the oldest continuously published weekly in the district and the principal newspaper of the Kresimirian religious right. It takes its name from Decelska’s epithet, “the City of Two Souls” — the secular technology capital Kromine and the seminary city Karlovac — and prints the motto For the Prophet Zvonomir beneath its masthead.
The paper is aligned with Divinism, the hardline political theology associated with the Sons of Kresimir, and is a consistent critic of the Civic Renewal Front, of Kromine’s secular technology elite, and of governments it judges insufficiently orthodox. It holds a licence from the Media Licensing Authority and has been fined and briefly suspended several times for its editorials.
History
Foundation and the Franj years (1931–1942)
Franj, a canon lawyer from Karlovac who had represented Decelska in the Assembly since the 1922 election, founded the Weekly in 1931 as the organ of the district’s “Religious Heartland” wing: a strong central state, but one whose authority derived from orthodox Kresimirianism rather than secular technocracy. The paper supported the 1933 National Security Act and the security measures taken against Bosken unrest along the Faith Line.
The paper’s early years were shaped by the rivalry between Franj’s clerical Revolutionary People’s Party and the harder nationalism of Kresimir Basic’s Sons of Kresimir. Where Basic preached a militant, separatist Divinism, the Weekly argued that the Republic’s religious order was best preserved within the structures of the founding party. After Franj declined to seek re-election in the 1942 election and retired to Karlovac, he gave his attention to the paper, and it was under his hand that the Weekly began its long drift toward the harder Divinist position he had once resisted.
The Iron Era and the Karlovac bombing (1940s–1961)
Under the authoritarian consolidation of Chancellor Kresimirovic II, the Weekly’s clerical conservatism sat awkwardly beside the state’s own centralism; it defended the Church’s control of the seminaries and the Divinity Certificate while complaining that the Chancellory treated the faith as an instrument of administration. The assassination of Kresimir Basic in 1954 and the bombing of Karlovac University in 1960, which killed twenty-eight people in the paper’s own city, hardened the Weekly against Bosken militancy and against any settlement that traded doctrine for peace. It opposed the Treaty of Brod Moravice of 1961 as a surrender, and its editorials from that period are still cited by Divinist writers.
The later twentieth century (1961–1992)
The paper remained a small-circulation but influential weekly through the Sanjakorin era, its readership drawn from the Karlovac clergy, the district’s conservative officers and the theological faculty. It attacked the State Enterprise Act less for its nationalisations than for what it called the “godless ledger” of statist economics, and it never reconciled itself to the secular tone of the capital press.
The liberal and technology eras (1992–Present)
The Weekly found its modern enemy in Boj Volansky, the pro-corporate leader of the Civic Renewal Front who held Decelska’s Senate seat from 1992 to 2022. It denounced his libertarianism as a licence for the Kromine elite and his party’s social liberalism as an assault on the faith. The rise of YakaSys and the KresiX platform under Ari Stov divided the paper’s instincts: it gave qualified support to the Digital Vigilance Act as a tool of public order, while warning that a machine built in Kromine must never become the conscience of a sacred state. In the 2022 election it opposed both Volansky’s rogue independent campaign and the CRF’s Illes Mehic, and it has since been a persistent critic of what it calls the “two souls” bargain that lets the secular capital govern the religious districts.
Editorial stance
The Weekly is conservative and Divinist. It defends the Council for Divinity, the authority of Karlovac University over the seminaries and the Divinity Certificate, and the integrity of the Faith Line. It opposes Bosken autonomy, progressive social policy and foreign cultural influence, and it treats the Civic Renewal Front as the political expression of everything it dislikes about Kromine.
Readership
Its readers are concentrated in Karlovac and the conservative parishes of Decelska: clergy and seminarians, the traditionalist officer class, SoK voters and the district’s surviving gentry. It is also read, often disapprovingly, in the Chancellory and among the Sinj establishment, where its leader column is regarded as a reliable index of religious-right opinion.
Sections
- The Leader — the paper’s unsigned editorial.
- Comment — signed columns and essays.
- Faith and Fatherland — church affairs and doctrine.
- The Provinces — district and parish news.
- Letters — correspondence from the clergy and the districts.
- Books — reviews, history and devotional writing.
Relations and controversies
The Weekly has been repeatedly fined by the Media Licensing Authority for editorials judged to insult the Chancellory, and twice suspended, though never for long enough to threaten its survival. It has been sued for libel by the Civic Renewal Front and by Maj Holdings, and its attacks on Volansky in the 1990s and 2000s remain among the most-read pieces in its archive. Critics on the secular left treat it as a relic of the Iron Era; its defenders reply that it is the only paper in Decelska that still says what the province believes.