His Holiness the Serbian Patriarch Mr. This morning, Porfirje served a prayer service in the church of St. Sava in Vračar in the presence of Mr. Aleksandar Vučić, the President of the Republic of Serbia, who then left for New York, for the session of the United Nations General Assembly, where he will fight against the adoption of the resolution on Srebrenica. On that occasion, Patriarch Porphyry said:

Dear Mr. President,

We have gathered in our sacred Memorial Temple of Saint Sava to pray before your trip to New York, where the great powers of the world intend to pass a resolution on the so-called genocide in Srebrenica at the United Nations. We consider it untruth and injustice in relation to the Serbian people.

On its cross-bearing journey throughout its turbulent history, our suffering people carried their cross calmly and with dignity. We also took it with us in the First World War when, in relation to the number of our compatriots, we were among the greatest sufferers in the world. The crusade continued in the Second World War, when, in the Independent State of Croatia, which included Bosnia and Herzegovina and extended all the way to the city of Zemun, our people suffered like few people in the world in terms of the number of victims and the manner of suffering. Likewise, in occupied Serbia, German Nazis killed groups of students in one day after school hours. The life of one executor was worth a hundred of our lives.

We suffered in every hamlet, village, city. The truth of that suffering did not have to be confirmed by imposed amoral resolutions: they were witnessed by the suffering itself, without false witnesses in the form of direct descendants and indirect followers of the perpetrators of the actual genocide.

Unfortunately, the world we live in has forgotten the genocide of the Serbian people in the twentieth century, as well as in the centuries that preceded it. Every other hill in places where Serbs live is a kind of Golgotha. We are comforted and reassured by the fact that we belong to a nation that in the years of peace, which came after the terrible times of death, followed the Gospel of the Risen Christ on which it was founded, forgave its debtors, and with members of other nations wanted and strove to build a better and common future.

That is why today we strongly raise our voices and point out the absolute falsehood and the attempt of unprecedented historical revisionism, in which the Serbian people, the victims of multiple genocides and ethnic cleansing, are tried to be declared the perpetrators of genocide through a simple inversion. We do not minimize the extent of the crimes in Srebrenica, but, as Orthodox Serbs, we do not keep silent about the crimes against the Serbian people in the vicinity of Srebrenica. Unfortunately, the proponents of the resolutions do not pay attention to those crimes in Serbian villages where whole families were oppressed and which happened continuously from 1992 to 1995. According to them, there is an exclusive right to sacrifice and pain. In our opinion, all innocent victims are innocent victims, be they Muslim or Croatian or Serbian, which is "wisely" kept silent by modern revisionists and enemies of historical truth, who selectively grant the exclusive right to pain and sacrifice with double standards. In this way, they leave all of us who live in these areas a stumbling block for the future.

And on this occasion, when as a nation we are being tested at the biggest international forum, we pray that God will give you strength, wisdom and determination to represent our people with dignity and arguments in the best possible way and to bear witness to the truth that all the victims of wars in these areas equally worthy of respect and prayerful remembrance. It is one of the necessary prerequisites for a peaceful future among people and nations in these areas.

May God bless you. Happy Easter!

Source: SPC