Patriarch Pavle

Slobodan Georgijev takes the measure of the man:

Patriarch Pavle of Serbia

… Pavle was a man with an untainted biography, devoted to the work of the church. As Patriarch, he would travel to work on public transport shunning the luxury trappings and expensive cars that formerly came with the office. “If they drive around in such expensive cars having made a pledge to modesty,” Pavle is reported to have said, “what would have they done had they not made the pledge.”

He was criticized in Liberal circles for not being more resolute in holding back the Church from interference in state affairs, although in the church system he was just the first among equals, and many decisions were made passed by the bishops, without his approval.

A pious man, he was nevertheless always willing to talk to anyone without feeling the need to impose his religious views. His message has been summed up in a sentence: it is better to live for just one day as men, than a whole lifetime as a monster.

Many will remember him for a statement he made in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the war: “Budimo ljudi iako smo Srbi”. Loosely, this translates into English as “It’s more important to be a man than a Serb.”

Read Patriarch Pavle, The Man and the Serb on BalkanInsight.com

Serbs lining the Belgrade streets to view the body of the late Patriarch Pavle at the cathedral church

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Patriarch Pavle, who headed the Serbian Orthodox Church during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s as Serbs warred with neighbors of other faiths, died on Sunday, a top church official said.

Pavle, 95, died at a special apartment in Belgrade’s Military Hospital where he had been treated since 2007 for various ailments, Bishop Amfilohije, the acting head of the church’s Holy Synod, said in a statement. “The death of Patriarch Pavle is a huge loss for Serbia,” President Boris Tadic said in a statement. “There are people who bond entire nations and Pavle was such a person.”

Thousands of mourners flocked to churches throughout the country after Pavle’s death was announced. The government ordered three days of national mourning until Wednesday.

Critics say Pavle failed to contain hardline bishops and priests who stoked Serb nationalism against Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosnians and publicly blessed paramilitaries who committed war crimes in Croatia and Bosnia. After the war, he became more vocal in politics and openly criticized the policies of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

More here.

Radio Srbija’s biography of the patriarch here.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew issued a statement:

We repeat the timely words of the Serb poet M. Betskovic about the late Patriarch: “None in this noisy era spoke so softly and yet was heard so widely as he. None spoke less and yet said more. None in our delusional age confronted truth with such calmness as he.”

May his memory be eternal!