The Shepherd, February 2010
NEWS SECTION
NEW PATRIARCH OF SERBIA
BBC NEWS reported on 22nd January that “The Serbian Orthodox Church has chosen the moderate Bishop of Nis, Irinej Gavrilovica, as its new patriarch. The 80-year-old was elected from three candidates initially chosen in a secret ballot by the Holy Synod. His rivals were considered hardline nationalists.… Bishop Irinej, who is seen as open to modernisation, will become the 45th Serbian patriarch when he is enthroned on Saturday. Correspondents say he may encourage a rapprochement with the Roman Catholic Church, which could see Pope Benedict XVI visiting Serbia in future. After being elected, he told the Tanjug news agency that his election to ‘this honourable and difficult duty’ was ‘God’s will and the will of the Holy Synod.’” On the very next day, the same agency reported the Enthronement of Patriarch Irinej: “The new patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church has been enthroned at a ceremony in Belgrade, pledging to back Serbia’s claims to Kosovo. Patriarch Irinej said the Church’s first duty was to help recover the breakaway province. The 80-year-old is considered a moderate who is open to modernisation. He has said he would not be opposed to Pope Benedict XVI visiting Serbia, suggesting a possible rapprochement with the Roman Catholic Church. The service in Belgrade was the first part of a two-stage induction process, with a second ceremony due at Pec in western Kosovo. ‘Our first duty as a Church is to safeguard our Kosovo, a holy and martyred land, to help our state to defend it from those who wish to seize it,’ Patriarch Irinej said in a speech after his enthronement on Saturday. ‘Kosovo is our holy land, our Jerusalem,’ he added. ‘We must go to Pec to complete this ceremony, but can we visit our relics? Without them, Serbia is not Serbia, without Kosovo it is deprived of its heart and soul.’” One can understand the Patriarch’s heartfelt concern over the tearing away of Kosovo from the Serbian lands, and, as Westerners, surely we should be aware of the guilt our governments bear in setting the dismemberment of the country in process by their bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999. But perhaps particular emphasis was given to this part of His Holiness’s address by a press more concerned with secular issues. The emphasis given to the likelihood of his welcoming a visit from the Pope is without doubt more worrying, and is certainly surprising in that, only in 1998, the Pope’s immediate predecessor, Pope John Paul II, beatified Cardinal Stepinac. In 1946, in a verdict, said to have polarised public opinion both in Yugoslavia and beyond, the Yugoslav authorities found him guilty of collaboration with the fascist Ustasˇe movement and complicity in allowing the forced conversions of Orthodox Serbs to Roman Catholicism. In later life, Stepinac did condemn the killing of Jews, Serbs, Gypsies, and of Croats who opposed the former fascist Croatian government, but his condemnation was neither strong nor public enough. Three quarters of a million Orthodox Serbs died rather than embrace Roman Catholicism, under the regime for which Stepinac bears some responsibility. The beatification of the Cardinal was painful both for faithful Serbs and for Jews, whose kinsmen had also suffered under the fascist regime. Our part now must be to pray for Patriarch Irinej, that through his ministry the Serbian Orthodox Church may be made steadfast in her Orthodoxy (for if Serbia without her relics is not Serbia, as the new Patriarch said, it certainly it not so without her Orthodoxy) - and brought spiritual benefit.
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