Serbian Orthodox Church patriarch PAVLE
died on November 15, 2009

Patriarch PAVLE: «Unable to turn the Earth into the Paradise, we must prevent it from becoming a Hell»

Dear Brothers, Please Pray!
This morning, 15 November, I received this news via Archimandrite Zacchaeus in Moscow:" Bishop Antony, the Serbian Representative in Moscow ... informed me that His Holiness, Patriarch PAVLE of Serbia fell asleep in the Lord earlier today. "
God receive him into the Heavenly Kingdom.
Memory Eternal.

Love in Christ,
+Seraphim

The Patriarch died on Sunday in a Belgrade hospital. He was 95. The patriarch had suffered from poor health for several years and was frequently hospitalised.

PAVLE was born as Gojko Stojcevic on Sept. 11, 1914, in the village of Kucani, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire at the time and is now in Croatia.

From 1944 to 1955, he was a monk at the Raca Monastery in central Serbia. From 1950, he lectured at the Prizen Seminary in Kosovo. Before he was appointed as the 44th Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, PAVLE served as bishop in Kosovo, the breakaway Serbian province considered the cradle of Serb history and culture.

PAVLE took over the leadership of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) on Dec. 1, 1990, amid upheavals over the bloody break up of Yugoslavia. His rule saw the church take a prominent role in the country, with religion back on the curriculum in Serbia's schools after more than 60 years of enforced atheism. The majority of Serbia's population of seven million people are Orthodox Christians.

President Boris Tadic said the patriarch's death was an - irredeemable loss for the entire Serbian nation. His death is also my personal loss.

Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic said the Orthodox church and Serbian nation had "lost a wise head... a spiritual leader we could be proud of both as a nation and as a state."

The Serbian government held an extraordinary session and proclaimed three days of mourning starting from Monday. Church bells were set to toll every hour throughout the country, while Serbian state television switched from its regular programme to tributes to the deceased patriarch.

A coffin with the body was brought to Belgrade's main cathedral where it was displayed to followers coming to pay tribute.

The president of neighbouring Montenegro, Filip Vujanovic, and the prime minister of the Republika Srpska, the Serb-held entity in Bosnia, Milorad Dodik, whose nations share the Orthodox faith and the church, sent letters of condolences to the SPC. - I express a sorrow for the death of his holiness patriarch PAVLE who served God, church and the people in the most difficult times - Dodik wrote.
Highly appreciated by the faithful for his simple lifestyle and personal humility, PAVLE has often been referred to as the "saint who walks."

He was widely viewed as the leader of a moderate wing within the church, and is widely expected to be replaced by a hardliner. State TV quoted him as saying at the beginning of the Balkans wars in 1990s: "It is our oath not to make a single child cry or sadden a single old woman because they are of another religion or nation."

PAVLE often spoke against violence in the ethnic wars Orthodox Serbs fought against Catholic Croats and Bosnian Muslims during the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II.
"God help us understand that we are human beings and that we must live as human beings, so that peace would come into our country and bring an end to the killing," PAVLE had appealed — mostly in vain — in 1991 as fighting raged between Serbs and Croats over disputed territories in Croatia.
"It is only the will of the devil that is served by this war," the patriarch was quoted as saying in 1992 but stopped short of naming names, notably not going explicitly against former President Slobodan Milosevic's ultra-nationalist policies, which triggered the wars.

Known for his support of the Serbs throughout the Balkans, PAVLE only distanced himself from the autocratic regime of late president Slobodan Milosevic after it had lost control over Kosovo, following the end of 1998-1999 conflict.
The Serbian Church eventually broke with its tradition of formal neutrality in 2000, openly urging the Serbian strongman to step down after the regimes humiliating defeat in 1999 following NATO bombing that ended Milosevic's crackdown against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo.

The Serbian Orthodox Church has been playing an active role in Belgrade's efforts to prevent Kosovo gaining independence, and rejected Pristina's unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia in February 2008.