Moscow, September 17, 2024
kossev.info
An archaeological-art festival in Kosovo and Metohija sparked controversy this year with an opening display that included the burning of crosses.
The Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Raška and Prizren condemned the “neopagan performance,” featuring what it called an “unprecedented and dishonorable act [that] represents a grave insult to all Christians.”
His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia also condemned the act in a letter to His Holiness Patriarch Porfirije, primate of the Serbian Orthodox Church, calling it a “vile act” that occurred on sacred land:
Your Holiness, beloved Brother and Concelebrant at God’s altar!
It was with deep sorrow that I learned of the sacrilegious act recently carried out by Kosovo Albanians on the ruins of ancient Ulpiana.
A composition of three crosses, reminiscent of the events of sacred history on Golgotha, was publicly burned at a local festival as part of a cheap farcical performance. This open desecration of the image of the Honorable Cross is a challenge to all Christians and an insult to their feelings: both Orthodox and Catholics, among whom there are also Kosovo Albanians.
This vile act was staged in Kosovo and Metohija—in the sacred Serbian land, where enemies of the Cross of the Lord and Holy Orthodoxy have long and persistently fought for de-Christianization.
The children of the Russian Church keep the memory of many Serbian brothers and sisters killed or expelled from their homeland, of thousands of destroyed crosses and tombstones in Serbian cemeteries, of hundreds of churches and monasteries of the Church of St. Sava, desecrated, burned or blown up by extremists.
I always pray for the good health of Your Holiness and for the granting of strength to Your Christ-loving flock, enduring oppression and sorrows in the land of Old Serbia. May the Father of mercies, and God of all comfort (2 Cor. 1:3) protect Your children and wipe away all tears from their eyes (Rev. 7:17), strengthening them in trials, shielding them from all trouble and misfortune.
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