Information Service of
the Serbian Orthodox Church
December 25, 2002

STATEMENT REGARDING LAST NIGHT’S EVENTS

With the blessing of His Holiness Serbian Patriarch Pavle, this year, as all the years before, the Anglican Church was supposed to perform the Christmas service in the Patriarchate Chapel, in front of the iconostasis. This service is always attended not only by the members of diplomatic corps from Great Britain but from other countries as well. However, some fifty younger citizens came in front of the entrance into the Patriarchate building and prevented this service by not letting the Anglican priest, Rev. Phillip Warner, and diplomats (among who there was His Excellency Charles Crawford, British Ambassador to FRY) enter the Patriarchate.

His Holiness Serbian Patriarch Pavle personally addressed the young men in front of the Patriarchate building, invited them to disperse and allow this service to be held, saying that they should not ruin traditionally good relations with the Anglican Church. Those relations were nourished by Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic of Zicha, who preached in the Cathedral of the Archbishop of Canterbury – head of the Anglican Church, then Patriarch Dimitrije and other Patriarchs. Patriarch Pavle then pointed out that during the First World War and after the Second World War the Anglican Church used to grant its churches to the Serbs who happened to be in England at the time without any belongings, and allowed them to gather and serve in Anglican churches. He also enumerated many other reasons why it was necessary for us to requite them with the same love, but the group of the young people in front of the Patriarchate refused to listen to him.

Afterwards, His Eminence Amfilohije, Metropolitan of Montenegro and the Littoral, member of the Holy Synod of Bishops, addressed the group and asked them to disperse and not make problems to the Serbian Orthodox Church. Archimandrite Andrej Cilerdzic, and Archdeacons Momir Lecic and Radomir Rakic did the same, but all in vain. It was obvious that those men do not comprehend the basic principles of Orthodoxy and Christianity.

For all this we express our most sincere regret and sadness, since that group – shouting certain slogans and behaving so aggressively – showed it is neither a friend of the Serbian people nor of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

In Belgrade, December 25, 2002