Croatia's top prelate is to visit the site of a notorious World War II extermination camp, his office said Tuesday, the first visit there by a leader of the country's Roman Catholic Church whose wartime role remains controversial.

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Cardinal Josip Bozanic, accompanied by the Zagreb bishops and priests, will visit the Jasenovac camp memorial complex on Thursday, a statement said.

The visit is part of a pilgrimage that will take Bozanic also to another nearby camp at Stara Gradiska and the town of Petrinja where he will hold a mass, it added.

"Croatia's Auschwitz," some 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Zagreb, was set up in mid-1941 by Croatia's pro-Nazi Ustasha regime.

The number of its victims -- mostly Serbs, followed by Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croatians -- still remains disputed.

Religious service for the victims

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that 100,000 people were killed in Jasenovac while the Simon Wiesenthal Centre puts the figure at some 600,000.

Every year Jasenovac host a memorial ceremony and a multi-denominational religious service for its victims. Although Catholic priests take part in the ceremonies, a Catholic Church head has never visited the site.

Critics accuse the Catholic Church and the country's World War II Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac of collaborating with the Ustasha regime, despite being aware of a genocide that killed scores of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and others.

They also warn against its current tolerance of displays in the country of pro-Nazi symbols and insignia.

Stepinac died under house arrest in 1960, after being jailed by the communist authorities for collaboration with the Ustasha regime. The late Pope John Paul II beatified him during his visit to Croatia in 1998.

Almost 90 percent of Croatia's population of 4.4 million are Roman Catholics.