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RELIGION-BALKANS: Death of Patriarch Brings Controversies Into Spotlight
By Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Nov 23, 2009 (IPS) - It is not often that anything in Serbia can bring several hundred thousand people
together, but that is exactly what happened Thursday when the Patriarch Pavle,
head of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC), was buried in a monastery
graveyard near Belgrade.
The Patriarch, aged 95, died four days earlier, on Nov. 15, after spending two
years at the Military Medical Academy of Belgrade in fragile health.
The immediate reaction from top Serbian officials, such as President Boris
Tadic and Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic was that they felt like "a member of
our family died." They had regularly "consulted the Patriarch before any major
political decision of importance for Serbia."
Four days of official mourning were proclaimed and Serbia stood still until
the Patriarch’s funeral. As his body lay in the open casket in the downtown
Cathedral Church of St. Michael Archangel, many thousands of mourners
came to kiss the hand of "the holy man," as he was known among ordinary
people, due to his modest and humble way of life.
All the recent polls say that 95 percent of Serbs declare themselves Orthodox
Christians - with the influence of the SPC both on people but also on politics
becoming impressive since the 1991 disintegration of former Yugoslavia.
But the death of the Patriarch, with all the expressions of public grief, solemn
radio and television programmes - with presenters wearing the traditional
black mourning clothes - could not prevent the brewing of controversy. The
controversy surrounds the SPC itself and the Patriarch himself, since his
coming to "the throne"- as his post is commonly called - in 1990.
"He was ‘a holy man’ due to his humble, simple and modest life," Belgrade
University professor and analyst Zarko Korac told IPS. "But the set of events
surrounding the SPC and Pavle, rouse controversy on the role of SPC in the
wars of the 90s and the constitutionally secular state of Serbia now plunging
into the arms of the church - with the accent of the importance of the
patriarch and religion in general."
Korac was referring to the behaviour of the SPC during the wars of
disintegration of the former Yugoslavia that led to deaths of more than
100,000 people - most of them Bosniak Muslims. The wars were waged
between Muslims, Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs.
Patriarch Pavle came to "the throne" in 1990, before the wars started. Neither
Pavle, nor his church and priests did much to change the direction of
aggressive and hard-line nationalism.
The SPC priests blessed the cannons that shelled the Bosnian capital of
Sarajevo for three and a half years from 1992 as well as the Kalashnikovs
used to kill Muslims around Srebrenica in 1995, according to video taken at
the time.
Priests have also played an active role in Serb volunteer units that committed
numerous war crimes in Croatia and Bosnia, with the mantra of "defending
the Orthodox Serbs from being eradicated by Catholic Croats and Muslims."
The SPC under Pavle has failed to distance itself from the Srebrenica massacre
- where 8,000 Muslims were killed - or any other war crimes committed by
Serbs who claimed to be devout Orthodox Christians.
"It is now important to see who will come next to "the throne," Korac
stressed.
One of the most prominent analysts of religious matters in Serbia, Zivica
Tucic, told Belgrade B92 Radio that "the choice of the next patriarch is of
major importance for Serbia."
According to the church canons, the next patriarch will be elected in May
next year, when the next session of all its archbishops and bishops is due to
be held.
In the meantime, Archbishop Amfilohije, a prominent conservative and
nationalist clergyman, has already been appointed to temporarily act as the
patriarch.
"It is not only the matter of who it will be," Tucic said. "Serbia is at a turning
political point - whether to continue its policy towards joining the European
Union (EU) or to give up to those conservative circles that prefer the nation to
remain turned toward itself."
Serbia is hoping to begin its process of joining the EU by the end of the year.
This has been the political ambition of the nation ever since former wartime
leader Slobodan Milosevic fell from power in 2000.
The only remaining pre-condition for such a move is the handing over of
Ratko Mladic, a Bosnian Serb general accused of the massacre in Srebrenica
by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The
Hague. He has been in hiding since 1995, but top Serbian officials have
hinted that he might be arrested by the end of the year.
"We need a patriarch that will be a visionary," Tucic said. "It should also be
good that the Patriarch be a Serb from Serbia, who knows the mentality and
events in Serbia proper."
He was referring to the fact that the strongest nationalists among the
archbishops and bishops are those who came from Bosnia and Croatia into
Serbia during the wars of the 90s - fanning nationalism and intolerance
towards other ethnic groups from former Yugoslavia.
Although hundreds of thousands of Serbs from those areas have found refuge
in Serbia proper since the 90s, the groups deeply differ in mentality and
attitudes, which are the sources of frequent tensions between newcomers and
Serbs in Serbia proper.
Serbia now has a population of 7.4 million, where more than a million people
are non-Serbs - such as ethnic Hungarians in the northern Vojvodina
province, Bosniak Muslims in the Sandzak region near Kosovo border, and
ethnic Albanians in the Presevo valley in the south.
"We are also witnessing now the effort of state to influence events in the
SPC," Belgrade university professor Vladimir Ilic told IPS. "The regime has
turned the death of the patriarch and the funeral into the a state and non
religious event. The President of Serbia attended the session of the Synod
(the SPC government) the other day, which is all without any constitutional
basis. This brings into doubt the constitutional regulation that Serbia is a
secular country."
Critics of the SPC, stress that the church is too conservative, too turned to
traditional values and ways of life that have nothing to do with modern life.
"The church says women belong to homes, they are here to bear children,
take care of family, be modest and humble and without any influence
whatsoever on the everyday modern life," sociologist Zorica Milenkovic told
IPS.
"That is something coming from 17th and not 21st century. Regardless of
what the SPC did or did not do in the 90s, it is essential that it now see that
many centuries have passed and that life has changed," Milenkovic explained.
"It is not mere or insubstantial politics it has to deal with. It is the challenge
of modern times that have to be explained to the people in the appropriate
way, and that is where the new head of the SPC might have an important
role."
(END)
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