Croatia - Bozica (Kresic) Bartulica, aged 84, passed away on August 4, 2026, in Zagreb, Croatia after a brief illness. Born on June 24, 1942, in the village of Hutovo, in the region of Herzegovina of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, she was known for her deep Catholic faith, coupled with a missionary spirit that guided her life and work.
Bozica was the fifth and youngest child of a devout Catholic family who lived in the mountain villages of Herzegovina. She was born at the height of World War II, when her parents were forced to flee their home and stay with close friends in a neighbouring village. Upon the end of the war, the Kresic family moved to the city of Vinkovci in present-day Croatia, where she attended elementary and high school.
In 1963, she decided to leave communist Yugoslavia and move to Canada, where she had an uncle who was a university professor in Ottawa. While living there, she met Dr. Nicholas Bartulica when he came to give a lecture to a local gathering of Croatians. Bozica and Nicholas were married at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Ottawa on April 26, 1969. They soon moved to Saint Joseph, Missouri, where he was already employed at the St. Joseph State Hospital, and recently celebrated 57 happy years of marriage.
They had five children together, four sons and one daughter, and she devoted herself to raising them and caring for her aging mother, who had come to live with the family. She was a tireless and devoted mother who loved her children and delighted in them. When the youngest child began kindergarten, Bozica returned to college to complete her degree and graduated from Missouri Western in May 1989 with a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and an Associate degree in Mid-management.
At the time there was growing interest in the Catholic community in the reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary in the village of Medjugorje, not far from where Bozica was born. She established an organization, Friends of Medjugorje, and began organizing yearly religious pilgrimages to Medjugorje and other sacred sites in Europe to promote the Catholic faith. Bozica continued to lead pilgrimages every year for over 35 years, the last one taking place a few weeks before her death. Through this mission, she touched thousands of lives and countless families, always encouraging a life of prayer. She and her pilgrims often stayed in contact and became close friends.
In the mid-1990s, when her homeland was again ravaged by war, she began collecting humanitarian aid for the refugees who had lost their homes and arranged for several containers of medical aid, food and clothing to be sent to Croatia to be distributed among refugees. She also assisted in bringing a few injured soldiers to Missouri for medical treatment.
In later years, Bozica became a loving and proud grandmother to 9 grandchildren, who thought their "Baka" was wonderful.
She is survived by her husband Nicholas and her children: sons Stephen (Zeljka), Nick (Kimberly), and Fr. Matthew; daughter, Nina; her loving grandchildren, Nikola, Ante, Charlie, Frane, Peter, Maggie, Ivan, Jude, and Elizabeth. She is preceded in death by her parents, three brothers and one sister, and her greatly missed son Fr. Angelo.
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