ORTHODOX bishops in Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina have appealed for national unity, as disputes and protests in both countries fuelled fears of instability.
“Every man was created as an icon of God — that man is not an enemy or opponent to others, but a close friend and brother,” the leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Porfirije, said on Monday.
“When we witness an absence of peace, we have an obligation to see and meet each other, to pray together that our Lord will grant everyone inner and external peace.”
The Patriarch spoke during a visit to Jerusalem, as student-led protests continued in Belgrade and other cities against official corruption and negligence.
A Serbian Orthodox bishop in Bosnia-Herzegovina warned that “clouds of fear and uncertainty” had also settled over his country, and urged public figures to “grasp the historical moment”.
“It is essential to talk to those who think, seek, and feel differently — we may have different views on this blessed land’s future, but we are close,” Bishop Sergije (Karanović) of Bihać & Petrovac said in a statement at the weekend.
“Our diversity must not cause fear and division, but be an occasion to get to know each other even better and weather the world’s geopolitical storms together. Empires will come and go, and we will be left alone again in the same land, under the same sky, once these dark clouds pass.”
The appeals follow five months of mass demonstrations across Serbia, which erupted when a new train station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad last November, leaving 16 dead.
Student groups have since protested against attacks on university staff and heavy-handed police reactions, while demanding reforms from the government of President Aleksandar Vučić after the resignation of his premier and several senior ministers.
Patriarch Porfirije faced accusations of aligning with President Vučić’s government when he urged students to stop their protests, while another church leader, Metropolitan David (Perović) of Kruševac, provoked a bitter riposte from six fellow bishops for branding the protesters “Serbian Ustashas”, in a reference to Croatian wartime nationalists.
“Students are our future — it is our duty to guide them with love and understanding, rather than reject and demean them,” the bishops, mostly from Serbian Orthodox dioceses abroad, said in a joint message.
“This kind of rhetoric, combined with the suppression of dissenting voices from the Church’s official platform, has led to a tyranny of arrogant and offensive words, spoken without accountability.”
Bosnia-Herzegovina also faces disorder after the President of its autonomous Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, was banned from office and sentenced to a year in prison for “attacking the constitutional order” and defying the country’s international peace envoy, Christian Schmidt.
The region’s national assembly, whose speaker also faces arrest, has responded with laws banning Bosnia-Herzegovina’s courts and prosecutors from exercising jurisdiction in the Serb-dominated territory.
In his weekend appeal, Bishop Sergije said that Bosnia-Herzegovina could not function without its ethnic groups, who should remember how the “flame of fratricidal hatred” was previously “ignited by sparks from outside”.
“It is important that we never repeat past mistakes, looking back only on a few years of war, but remember instead the peaceful decades and centuries when we lived as true brothers,” said the Bishop, whose western see of Bihac was besieged for three years during the 1992-95 war.
“Let us protect each other’s places of worship and cemeteries, respecting the contrasts that make this country richer. Just because someone holds a different opinion does not mean they hate us.”