Lighthouses

SERBIAN PATRIARCH PAVLE (1914–2009) AND ONE INSTRUCTIVE EXAMPLE OF HIS ATTITUDE TOWARD THE OPPRESSORS OF THIS WORLD
Living on the Crucifixion
In deep and cruel dictatorship, the Secret Service and the Party, in 1962, had already prepared everything for imposing decisions that would cause a schism in the Serbian Church. Everyone was silent at the assembly, some of them out of profound calculations and by the order, some out of despair or cowardice. And then he rose up, chaste and respected Bishop of Prizren, Pavle. Above the bowed heads of the archbishops, his quiet and simple words of truth thundered. Did he prevent the oppressors to do their evil intention? He did not. But he saved the Serbian face, leaving the example and the path that we later followed to reach ourselves and the restoration of unity. We already respect Him as a saint, and who, and how, remembers those who did not oppose evil for ”higher reasons”? Today, when there is a similar danger over the Church and the people, everyone who is sitting in the Holy Archbishopric Assembly of the Serbian Orthodox Church should be reminded of this

By: Mišo Vujović

Monastic humbleness, wisdom of holy fathers and prayerful nobleness of the most loved arch-shepherd of the Serbian church, often separated him from important events and greater presence in public life. Nevertheless, there are very few hidden details in his pure biography, written with wisdom, dedication to the Lord and a vast list of good deeds and a selfless sacrifice to Christ the Savior, the mother Church and the entire Serbian people. This review dates back to the 1960’s and illuminates a period of great temptations of the Serbian Orthodox Church. At the time, there were enormous pressures and control by the communist authorities, which led to a schism that started with the departure of the US-Canadian eparchy from the auspices Serbian Orthodox Church. The general public knows little about the bravery of archbishop of Prizren Pavle and his voice of reason in these most dramatic events in the recent history of the Serbian church.
Already at the time of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Serbian Orthodox Church was high on the list of enemies of the Communist Party. Lenin himself said that ”Communism in Serbia will never come to life until the Serbian Orthodox Church is destroyed as a cradle of the greater Serbian hegemony”.
The serious conflict between the Church and the state began in the mid-1930s with the Concordant crisis, when the Church opposed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia signing a treaty with the Vatican. The Concordat signed between the government of Milan Stojadinović and the Vatican awaited parliamentary ratification for as long as two years and, on the day designated for the ratification, on 19 July 1937, there were major conflicts between demonstrators and the police, known as the ”Bloody Procession”. The ratification was still voted out, four days later, and on 24 July, a day after the ratification, one of the biggest opponents of the Concordant, Patriarch Varnava (Rosić), dies, under yet unexplained circumstances.
After the communists had come to power, the an orchestrated and well thought-through persecution of the Serbian church began with the trials of the clergy, bishops, humiliating religious rites, agitation and threats, establishing the famous Religious Commission – a collective head of the Serbian church, by selecting obedient and eliminating unsuitable bishops, resulting in a schism in the Serbian church at the end of 1963, which was overcome only in 1992, on Sretenje, with a joint liturgy of the Patriarch Pavle and the bishop of the so-called schismatic church in America and Canada, Irinej Kovačević.
The hero of this story, Patriarch Pavle, for whom we can say was a peace-maker and a uniter, not only of the Church but also of the people, is probably the only authority accepted by the distrustful emigration, who saw in everybody only provocateurs and associates of the Secret Service.
The attitude of the political emigrants towards the elected Patriarch Pavle, ranks him among the few indisputable personalities of a traumatic and controversial time.

BEHEADING AND SCHISM

The schism in the Serbian Orthodox Church was preceded by the dismissal of the Bishop of America and Canada, Dionisije, who had been holding that office for twenty-five years and enjoyed a great reputation among the Serbian immigrants and the people of faith. Without canonical guilt, but with an evident anti-communist position, inclined to provide shelter to fugitive Serb nationalists, to feed priests-emigrants, he represented, together with King Peter II, a symbol of an anti-communist struggle.
The verdict to Bishop Dionisije was adopted in 1962 at the church politburo consisting of Patriarch German, Krsto Leković, Head of the Secret Service in charge of Religious Affairs, Miloje Dilparić from the Commission for Faith and Đorđe Smiljanic, Vice-President of the Diocesan Council of the Archdiocese of Belgrade and Karlovac, according to Dragoljub Vurdelja in his book The Beheaded Serbian Church, published in Trieste, 1964.
Vurdelja quotes one of the archbishops, whose name he was unable to disclose at the time for understandable reasons, who described the atmosphere of the Assembly of 5 March 1964, when the final verdict to Bishop Dionisije was adopted, as follows:
”When we entered the assembly hall we all felt weight, we had tears in our eyes. Some of us knew what was going on, and others were speculating. Everybody was convinced that something would not be good for the Church, especially when we saw the heads of the Religious Commission coming. There was a dead silence in the hall. The Patriarch opened the assembly, then began to count us When he saw that not everyone was present, he spoke to a representative of the Religious Commission. Then he announced that the assembly was valid and could begin working...”
The author further states that voting, for the first time in history, was public and individual (the communist system) in order for the ”religious Secret Service” to control the voting. Moma Marković, president of the Religious Commission, the already mentioned Krsto Leković, better known as uncrowned Serbian Patriarch, Miloje Dilparić, Branko Karapandža, and Radovan Grković, under whose control the dismissal of Bishop Dionisije was carried out, were sitting in the adjacent rooms.
After the introductory speech, the presentation of ”evidence” and the verdict, more precisely – execution of the unsuitable bishop, painful silence was interrupted, with his prudent courage and evangelical truth, by Pavle, the Bishop of Prizren.
”The ruling is contrary to the most basic principles of justice and the Holy Scriptures”, the Bishop of Prizren and the Holy Patriarch of Serbia, Pavle, began his exposition.
”We are accusing our brother for what we do not respect ourselves, namely, we are stepping on the canons and given vows. Canons tell us: No charge could be received against a brother, from people who do not have moral qualifications to judge another, and especially if the claims are not corroborated by evidence. They also tell us: who and what kind of ethical suitability one must have in order to take our high position. We judge without hearing, we elect people without moral qualifications to high positions, those who deserve to be dismissed (it refers to the so-called federal bishops sent to America and Canada, M. V.). Where is the morality in this, brothers, and where is conscience? All the dirt for the Fermilijan, I heard, not on the street, but from you, you even showed me some of his pictures with women. You judge a sinner, as you say he is, however, you want to put an even worse one in his place. I ask you again, don’t we trample over the canons and the vows with it? I said, and I saved my soul”, our good Paja, as the believers called him, finished his address at the Assembly.

PILGRIMS ON A SPECIAL MISSION

Most people and clergy, as well as the Serbian National Defense, the umbrella organization of Serbs in America founded in 1914, stood behind Bishop Dionisije, who founded the Free Serbian Church in America and Canada. The same year he founded the Australian-New Zealand Eparchy, and the Free Serbian Orthodox Diocese in Europe was founded in 1969 at the church assembly of free church municipalities in Europe, headed by Bishop Lavrentije Trifunović.
The fact that Patriarch German was under a lot of pressure, and that during his entire mandate at the St. Sava throne he had to invent ways to protect the interests of the Church, and was accused of being a red patriarch, was also claimed by the first prior of the Hilandar Monastery, the old Mitrofan. During one of his first visits to the Holy Mountain, Patriarch German told him that the monastery was under the supervision of Secret Service and that, at their request, it often sends written recommendations to the monastery administration for permission for ”pilgrims on a special mission” to stay there.
In the 1960s, Hilandar became the bridge connecting political emigrants and their relatives from the homeland.
”Father Mitrofan, a part of the recommendations that I send to you I wrote unwillingly, because the authorities asked me to do so. From now on, know that not every such letter, officially signed, is really my blessing, but is a forced recommendation. When you receive such a recommendation with my signature and the desire that the blessing of St. Sava and St. to rest on you, your brother in Christ, Patriarch Serbian German, know that it is about clerical, well-intentioned people or an individual”, old Mitrofan conveyed the patriarch’s words in his testimony. He was convinced that Patriarch German, in difficult times, by means of wise politics, managed to preserve the core of the Serbian Orthodox Church despite the schism.
But let us return to his successor, Patriarch Pavle, an evangelical pastor who, with his attitude and beliefs, not only tried to resist the execution of a bishop, but showed, unlike most of the bishops in the Assembly at that time, that anyone who truly testifies to Christ has no reason to back away from earthly injustice and violence.
Patriarch Pavle, led by the apostolic peace, reminded us all with his actions that there are greater values than anything that a modern man aspires to. And leaving this world, he showed that despite all the differences, we can be united. The people, without a single attempt at disturbing the order, waited in silence, for hours and days, to say goodbye to the man whose life had been forgiveness on the crucifixion, first in Kosovo and Metohija, where he survived the pogroms and the suffering, murders, rapes, desecrations, expulsions, the burning of the Patriarchate of Peć, and then the Supreme One sent him to us, broken and decapitated in a ruined house, to bring us together and lead us to know the justice of God.

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Protest
Lenin’s statement about the necessity of destroying the Church in Serbia followed the protest of the ambassador of the Kingdom of Serbia, Miroslav Spalajković, at the first reception for foreign diplomats in Moscow after the October Revolution. Due to the cruel murder of Emperor Nikolai and his family, the ambassador told Lenin in his face: ”You are a bandit, you embarrassed the Slavic race! I spit in your face!” According to writings of academician Milorad Ekmečić, George Kennan, a US diplomat, testified about this incident.

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Survive or Disappear
Patriarch German, apparently forced to sacrifice individual bishops so that the entire Church would not be destroyed as some of the dioceses that had remained with very few clergy and a large number of indoctrinated and people with a hostile attitude toward the Church, himself feeling uncomfortable because of the mission he had to fulfill at that time when it was about ”surviving or disappearing”, responded briefly: ”We are required to do this by the interests of the Fatherland, and in this specific case, it is the only meaningful solution.”