Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) Porfirije today sent a letter to Pope Leo 14 and to a number of leaders of the world’s largest countries and global organizations, in which he called on them to use their authority so that the authorities in Pristina halt the implementation of the “extremely discriminatory Law on Foreigners” and not allow the “Orthodox Serbian people to be expelled from Kosovo and Metohija”.
Porfirije sent the letter, among others, to Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Donald Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, as well as United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres and UNESCO Director-General Khaled El-Enany.
In the letter, as reported by the SOC, the Patriarch warned that the implementation of that law would not only call into question the work of the University in Kosovska Mitrovica, elementary and secondary schools attended by Serbian students under the programs of Serbia, as well as the work of the entire health system in which Serbs from Kosovo and Metohija receive medical care, but also the “survival of the Serbian people and Orthodox holy sites”.
“By implementing this law, Serbs would lose the opportunity to be educated and treated, and employees in education and healthcare would lose their jobs, which would lead to an even more massive, if not final, departure of Orthodox Serbs from this centuries-old Christian land, on which, to this day, there are around 1,300 Orthodox churches, monasteries and other, previously destroyed, Christian holy sites,” Porfirije stated.
The Patriarch told world statesmen that nowhere else in Europe, despite the previously mentioned destruction, does there exist in one place “such a concentration of Christian holy sites, four of which are on the UNESCO World Heritage List in danger”.
Patriarch Porfirije stated that the SOC persists in seeking a peaceful solution and that it expects the Serbian authorities to do everything possible to find a compromise solution, emphasizing that human lives are “the greatest sanctity and we are obliged to protect them”.
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Source: N1, Foto: ATA Images