BELGRADE (SERBIA) – Key government officials, clergy and hundreds of believers gathered in Belgrade on Friday to witness the enthronement of Porfirije as the new Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church. This came a day after he was elected.
The 59-year-old is the 46th Patriarch of the Church and is viewed as a modernist. He succeeds Patriarch Irinej, who died in November from COVID-19 at the age of 90.
The new Patriarch will lead a Church of about 12 million people in Serbia and the five other former Yugoslav republics, Kosovo, as well as dioceses in the US, Australia and Western Europe.
He stood amid bishops in ornate vestments and was handed over a crosier, a ceremonial staff, which symbolises his office, and a stiff white mitre.
Including the Patriarch, most of the people assembled there did not wear face masks in spite of a surge in the number of coronavirus infections in the country.
Another segment of the enthronement ceremony is expected to take place in the coming weeks at the Pec monastery in Kosovo where Porfirije will take the throne. It has been the seat of Serbian Orthodox Patriarchs since medieval times.
In his sermon, Porfirije said that Kosovo, Serbia’s former southern province, mainly populated by Albanians, would be the focus of the Church policies.
“Kosovo is for us … an umbilical cord that links us with the essence of our identity,” he said.
For Serbians and the Church, Kosovo is the cradle of the Orthodox Christianity and is home to some of their most treasured religious sites.
Serbia lost control over Kosovo in 1999 after NATO bombed its troops during a counter-insurgency killing more than 13,000 people, mainly ethnic Albanians.
Both Serbia and the Orthodox Church have the support of Russia, which is seen as a traditional Slavic and Orthodox Christian ally.