Archimandrite John Salter, Chairman, writes in Chrysostom, Pascha 2010:
The death occurred in Belgrade on 15th
November 2009 of the 44th Patriarch of Serbia, Pavle, at the age of
85. His Holiness had been ill for some years and had lived in the Military
Medical Academy in Belgrade.
Patriarch Pavle was born Gojko Stojcevic in
the Austro-Hungarian Empire at Kucano, Croatia.
Both his parents died when he was a child and he was brought up by an
aunt. He lived to see the
Austro-Hungarian Empire collapse, the creation of the state of the Southern Slavs (Yugoslavia) under the King of the Serbs, the Croats and the
Slovenes, the dictatorship of the
Communists under Marshall Tito, the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and the return of the heir to the
throne, Crown Prince Alexander Karageorgevitch, to reside in, but not to reign
over, Serbia.
Following World War II Pavle worked as a
construction worker, but in 1946 he entered the monastery of Blagovestenje at
Ovcar, and then transferred to Raca monastery, where he became an Archimandrite
in 1957, having taken post graduate studies in Athens. On his return from
Greece he became Bishop of Ras with Prizren (which included the troubled
district of Kosovo). For 33 years he was
in that post until he was elected to succeed the Patriarch German.
The
conflict in Serbia and Bosnia Herzo-Govina weighed heavily upon Pavle in his
latter years, and he found himself at cross purposes with Milosevic. As a
peacemaker on the ecclesiastical front he brought together the schismatic Free
Serbian Orthodox Church, which means that the two Serbian churches back-to-back
with each other in Donnington, Shropshire, may now worship together. His
attempts to reconcile the Macedonian Orthodox Church came to nothing as there could be no going back on its
unilateral declaration of autocephaly,
as all the national Orthodox Churches
had almost always declared unilateral autocephaly in the past. Politically he
remained a Serbian nationalist. Memories of the Croatian Ustashi atrocities
would have been still fresh in his memory and what had happened to one of his
predecessors, the then Patriarch of Serbia.
Amongst the population of Belgrade
Patriarch Pavle was known as “the walking saint” as he dispensed with a car and
either walked or travelled by bus in the city and its environs. When asked why,
when his bishops all travelled in limousines, he travelled on foot or by bus,
he replied: “I will not purchase a car until every Albanian and Serbian
household in Kosovo and Metohija has an automobile”.
Patriarch Pavle’s funeral was conducted in
the relatively new cathedral of St. Sava, in the presence of His All Holiness
the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomeos I of Constantinople; His Holiness
Patriarch Daniel of Romania, His Beatitude Filaret, Metropolitan of Minsk and Slutsk;
His Beatitude Archbishop Anastasios of Tirana and All Albania; His Beatitude
Metropolitan Christopher of Prague and His Eminence Cardinal Angelo
Sodano. Letters of condolence were
received from His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI and the heads of many governments;
the two Islamic communities in Serbia and the Jewish community.
Patriarch Pavle has been succeeded by
Patriarch Irinej. The new Patriarch is only five years younger than Pavle. He
is said to be a man of moderation and it is reported from Belgrade that he
would not oppose a visit from Pope Benedict XVI, but he has a group of
hard-line ecclesiastical zealots to deal with, especially in some of the
monasteries, but Irinej is “a man of dialogue” and “good news for the Church
and People of Serbia”.