Eternal Memory: Patriarch Pavle of Serbia

Archimandrite John Salter, Chairman, writes in Chrysostom, Pascha 2010:

    The death occurred in Belgrade on 15^th November 2009 of the 44^th 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”.