Belgrade, November 18, 2024
Photo: spc.rs
Friday, November 15, marked the 15th anniversary of the repose of the ever-memorable Patriarch of the Serbian Church, His Holiness Pavle, whom many consider a saint.
Pat. Pavle (Stojčević ) of Serbia (September 11, 1914-November 15, 2009) lived a long life full of Christian virtue. His simplicity, meekness, and humility, combined with his strict asceticism inspired the love that millions of believers had for him during his lifetime. Many already considered him a living saint, and after his repose, faith in the holiness of Pat. Pavle is growing ever more and strengthening in the hearts of the faithful.
On Friday, under the chairmanship of His Holiness Patriarch Porfirije, a regular session of the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church was held at the Patriarchal Palace in Belgrade. The session began with a memorial service for the repose of Pat. Pavle, reports the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Pat. Porfirije said in his honor:
Today, at the beginning of the session, together with the members of the Holy Synod, I prayed for the blessed repose of my predecessor and teacher, the unforgettable Serbian Patriarch Pavle, who on this day fifteen years ago stepped onto the path that leads from death to life (1 Jn. 3:14). Fully conforming his life to the Lord’s word recorded in the Gospel, he fulfilled every word of Christs Apostles and embraced every ascetic feat of the ageless experience of the living tradition of Christ’s Church, thus leaving an indelible mark in the heart of every person who had the opportunity to meet him, hear his preaching, or read any of his thoughts. I am certain that Patriarch Pavle continues to pray for his people today, and because of his modesty and humility, because he did not say one thing and do another, because he was a witness to Christ’s love, I deeply believe that the Lord hears and accepts his prayer for his people.
Eternal memory and may he inherit the Kingdom of Heaven!
***
Patriarch Pavle was born on September 11, 1914, as Gojko Stojčević, in the Slavonian village of Kućanci near Donji Miholjac. He lost his parents early in life. His aunt took care of young Gojko from when he was three years old. He completed lower gymnasium in Tuzla and higher gymnasium in Belgrade.
After graduating from the Sarajevo Seminary in 1936, he enrolled in the Faculty of Theology in Belgrade, where he graduated in 1942. During World War II, he was a religious teacher at the Refugee Children's Home in Banja Koviljača.
In August 1944, Gojko contracted tuberculosis. Doctors predicted he had three months to live. He was healed through prayer at Vujan Monastery. In gratitude to God for restoring his health, he carved a cross that is still preserved in the monastery.
After his novitiate, he was tonsured a monk in 1948 at the Blagoveštenje Monastery in Ovčar-Kablar, receiving the monastic name Pavle, after the Apostle of Love. From 1949 to 1955, he was a brother at Rača Monastery. He spent the 1950–1951 school year as a teacher at the Seminary of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Prizren.
He was ordained to the priesthood in 1954. He pursued postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Theology in Athens from 1955 to 1957. He was elected Bishop of Raška-Prizren in May 1957. Serbian Patriarch Vikentije consecrated him in September of the same year at the Belgrade Cathedral. He was enthroned as Bishop of Raška-Prizren on October 13, 1957.
In the Diocese of Raška-Prizren, he restored old and destroyed churches and built new ones. He worked hard to cultivate new priestly and monastic vocations. He constantly traveled and served in all places of his diocese, and took special care of the seminary in Prizren, where he taught church singing and Church Slavonic. As a bishop and professor, he educated many generations of new workers in the Lord’s vineyard. As a hierarch in Kosovo and Metohija, during a very difficult time for Serbs and the Serbian Church, he spent more than 33 years. He regularly informed the Holy Synod and Assembly of Bishops, as well as state authorities, about Albanian attacks on Church property, monks, priests, and the Serbian people who were being forced to leave under pressure. He himself endured insults and physical attacks with Christian humility and patience. He testified before the United Nations and numerous statesmen about the suffering of the Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohija.
The Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church elected him on December 1, 1990, as the forty-fourth Primate of the Serbian Orthodox Church. On Sunday, December 2, 1990, he was enthroned in the Belgrade Cathedral as Archbishop of Peć, Metropolitan of Belgrade-Karlovci and Serbian Patriarch, and on May 22, 1994, in the ancient patriarchal throne in the Patriarchate of Peć.
During Patriarch Pavle’s time, several dioceses were restored and established. In 1992, the Seminary of St. Peter of Cetinje was restored in Cetinje. The following year, the Academy of the Serbian Orthodox Church for Arts and Conservation began its work. The Faculty of Theology of St. Basil of Ostrog in Foča was opened in 1994, and the Seminary of St. John Chrysostom in Kragujevac in 1997.
The Information Service of the Serbian Orthodox Church was established at the end of 1998. Religious education returned to public schools in the Republic of Serbia in 2001, and the Faculty of Theology returned to the University of Belgrade in 2004. Patriarch Pavle took special care in the construction of the Serbian people’s covenant church, the Memorial Church of St. Sava on Vračar, which was structurally completed during his time.
Patriarch Pavle made great contributions to Orthodox Church unity. He met with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, Patriarch Alexei II of Moscow and All Russia, Archbishop Christodoulos of Athens and All Greece, Patriarch Peter VII of Alexandria and All Africa, and other primates of Local Orthodox Churches.
On the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, February 15, 1992, through a conciliar Divine Liturgy served by Serbian Patriarch Pavle and Metropolitan Irenej of New Gračanica, complete liturgical and canonical unity was established with the Serbian Orthodox Church in the Diaspora after several decades. He worked especially hard for healing the schism in what was then the FYR Macedonia. In meetings with religious leaders of Roman Catholics and Muslims, as well as through direct and written appeals to political leaders at home and abroad during the tragic wars in former Yugoslavia and NATO aggression against Serbia, Patriarch Pavle evangelically advocated for peaceful and just resolution of conflicts.
He was chairman of the Holy Synod’s Commission for the translation of the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament, which was published in 1984, and chairman of the Holy Synod’s Commission for preparing the Service Book in Serbian. In Glasnik, the official gazette of the Serbian Patriarchate, he published articles in question-and-answer format from 1972, which became the three-volume work Let Some Questions of Our Faith Be Clearer to Us in 1998. In 1989, he published a monograph Devič, Monastery of St. Joanikije of Devič.
He prepared several liturgical books: Srbljak, Prayer Book, Supplementary Prayer Book, Great Prayer Book, and others. He was very instrumental in publishing the capital collection Endowments of Kosovo, arguably the best and most comprehensive work about our holy places and people in Kosovo and Metohija and their suffering. For his great contribution to theological science, the Faculty of Theology of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade awarded him an honorary doctorate in theology in 1998.
Patriarch Pavle spent two years under medical care at the Military Medical Academy in Belgrade, where he fell asleep in the Lord on November 15, 2009. He was given funeral rites in front of St. Sava Temple on Vračar with the highest church and state honors, with the participation of primates or high representatives of all Orthodox Churches. He was buried on November 19, 2009, at Rakovica Monastery near Belgrade.
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