THE SPIRIT OF CRIME LIVES ON – Patriarch Porfirije will also celebrate the plans and planners of genocide!

By: R. Belko

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The polemics that have been conducted about the direction and actions during Porfirije's tenure as the first man of the Serbian Orthodox Church were not without reason, and those who saw the new head of the SOC as just another extended arm of Aleksandar Vučić's regime will be closest to the truth.

Although in his inaugural sermon upon enthronement, he claimed that his patriarchal service would not stray onto paths of “partial interests or modern partisanship and partial engagement in politics” and that he would “follow the spiritual mission of the church to gather, unite and connect, to serve peace and unity,” Porfirije is, by all accounts, turning to the mode of operation established three decades before him by other patriarchs.

Because it is difficult to explain that the first man of the SOC, in his mission of peace and unity, comes to celebrate the unconstitutional, more provocative, day of the entity Republika Srpska, aware of how many wounds both that day and that celebration reopen.

Patriarch Porfirije possesses sufficient knowledge and education to understand the constellation of relations within Bosnia and Herzegovina, he is informed enough to know at what time he is coming, and above all, he must surely be clear that the RS entity was born from a crime sanctified by his predecessors.

The Patriarch of the SOC has thus pushed himself into a political trap, and with this act, he has nullified the announcements and messages about good relations and love towards other peoples.

Because, if he truly meant what he said upon his installation, when he stated “I am a Serb, but I am, above all, a Christian, and that is a universal value, and therefore I will preach and witness Christ. I love my people, but I also love and will love all other peoples, every human being, every icon of God,” then Patriarch Porfirije should have ensured that we see him as such.

Instead of peace and love with others, Porfirije has nevertheless decided to serve the regime of Aleksandar Vučić, his Banja Luka protégé Milorad Dodik, and the policies that still dream of uniting all Serbs into one state, and are increasingly and loudly announcing it.

Thus, in the service of those who, even decades later, deny the Srebrenica genocide, for whom neither the mass graves of primary, secondary, and tertiary types nor all the white headstones of Srebrenica are sufficient proof that genocide occurred in that BiH town. International verdicts have not changed much there either.

And the genocide began and was planned precisely on that January 9, 1992, which will be celebrated in a few days in the RS entity, and which will also be attended by the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church. That the plans of January 9 were actually plans of crime, destruction, and genocide was warned about several months after January 9 by the SOC's favorite military leader, Ratko Mladić.

And Porfirije knows all this, just as he knows that this genocide was intended for Bosniaks and Croats throughout BiH, that besides the genocide, many other crimes that the civilized and spiritual world abhors were committed based on the plans of that January 9.

But Porfirije has no problem knowing; he is a highly educated man, a polyglot, I am sure everything is already clear to him, but he lacks the strength and courage to resist the need to deny the worst crime on European soil since World War II.

Just as Drago Pilsel once described him, Porfirije is “unprepared to embrace the darkest side of the Srebrenica extermination – denial and glorification – he fled to what people who talk about the crimes of their own side always flee to when they lack the courage to call them by their proper name: he fled to talk about humanity of the most general kind, which refuses to say who, what, when, and why did it.”

However, once Porfirije did step out of his fears, but only when it was necessary to condemn the Montenegrins who adopted the Resolution on the Srebrenica Genocide in that country's Parliament.

Then he accused them of being on the side of those who divide and rule. And Patriarch Porfirije is apparently on the side of those who kill, rape, burn, and persecute in order to take control of territory and create a “Serbian World.”

The hopes of many that Porfirije would be different from his predecessors are slowly fading, and only the followers of the dark policies of the nineties are satisfied, who, like some devilish circle, hover over BiH every January 9.

Hope, love among people for the sake of God's peace will have to wait for a new time and a new patriarch.