DECR Communication Service, 10.04.2023. 

The hypocritical West sent out Patriarch of Constantinople ‘to stab a knife in the heart of the Russian Orthodoxy - in Holy Kiev’. In this historic time, the Orthodox Serbs’ prayers are lifted up in defence of Metropolitan Onufriy of Kiev and All Ukraine, the clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the monastic community of the Kievo-Pechersky Lavra, Bishop Sergije of Bihać and Petrovac stated.

‘For the last thirty years, we have become witnesses to many historic events which have changed the world in which we were born’, Bishop Sergije stressed, ‘Moreover, big countries have disappeared to give rise to a great number of small states, but for another thirty years numerous attempts, though /un/successful, were made to fragment the Orthodox Church into as many as possible local churches, with each to serve the state, not God and the faithful. When the attempts to destroy the unity of the Orthodox world were not achieved, they resorted to the formation of non-canonical churches’.

The hierarch of the Serbian Church pointed out that for the Serbs there is nothing new in what is happening today to the Russian Orthodox Church and her flock.

‘Numerous attempts have been made to encroach upon the unity of the Serbian Orthodox Church, beginning fr om attacks in Macedonia to attacks in Montenegro, wh ere a declining political party together with its perpetual president has attempted to oust the Serbian Orthodox Church from the territory of Montenegro, forgetting that the state was born in the monastery chambers of this Church’, the bishop stated, ‘In Kosovo and Metohija, we have encountered with countless attempts to steal the Orthodox heritage and place it within the frame of a non-existent Kosovo-Albanian medieval legacy, speaking in the modern language, to put an alien content in their own shell’.

Bishop Sergije warned that ‘the same is happening today and now it is in the Russian spiritual land, in the capital of today’s Ukraine’.

‘The prescription is the same - divide et impera, divide and rule!’ the hierarch pointed out. ‘They have been working on this project for years, even decades. The aim is to separate and to cause a quarrel between brothers of the same faith, to divide the Church of Christ and finally to break down the people on whose power the destiny of the entire humankind depends’.

‘Those who always call to freedom and democracy, keep silent today about the persecution of Orthodox monks in the Kievo-Pechersky Lavra, which was and remain with the only canonical church on the soil of Ukraine - the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. That silence is not a result of the West’s weakness, but a clear admission standing behind all this are the same ones who persuaded Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to give legitimacy to the non-canonical church structure with his signature, for which there is no ecclesiological and canonical basis,’ Bishop Sergije continued.

Today, the Orthodox Serbs are praying together with Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev and All Ukraine and the UOC clergy who are subjected to persecution in their country. ‘They are arrested on no grounds, beat up without mercy and punished without sin and trial. There is no freedom for them in a spiritually poisoned country subjugated by authoritative regime, which is drawing by blood the borders that never existed. Today, the Kievo-Pechersky Lavra is the Golgotha of the Orthodox world. Those who are crucified in it today by persecutions will be risen by freedom tomorrow; for there is no resurrection without death! Let no one doubt it!’ Bishop Sergije testified.