His Holiness, Serbian Patriarch Porfirije, served a memorial service for the victims of the March Pogrom of 2004 in Kosovo and Metohija on March 17, 2025, in the Cathedral Church of the Holy Archangel Michael in Belgrade.
– Our people, brothers and sisters, our people are the people of Christ, our people are Orthodox people, our people believe in the word of God. Our people are sealed with the name of the Son of God, and that means with the cross. The cross is the power and sign of our people. The cross is a foretaste of the secret victory, the victory of Christ over our greatest enemy, over the greatest enemy of the entire family of Christ, over the threefold enemy: over the devil, sin and death; and therefore, as the great poet said: We are destined to bear the cross – Patriarch Porphyrios emphasized and reminded:
– There are two types of carrying a personal cross. One way is whether a person carries the cross only on his shoulders and according to his mind, according to his philosophy, according to his insights into everything that happens in him and around him, whether he carries the cross solely relying on himself and human strength, or whether he carries the cross because he knows that it is the cross of Christ and because he heard Christ say: Take up your cross and follow me. We have this second approach, which we have decided on once and for all from Saint Sava to our days and so it will be for centuries and centuries. And therefore we know that, because we carry the cross of Christ, i.e. For His sake we carry the cross, we carry our life with all its ups and downs, accepting everything that comes from us and outside of us as an expression of God's providence. Because we carry our cross in this way, we know that it is the cross of Christ and that it already has within itself, but also in fullness and in eternity, the victory of Christ, the victory of the risen Christ who defeated every one of our enemies.
– The history of our people is also the history of our suffering. We could say that every day is a kind of anniversary, the anniversary of our suffering. There is no day that is not marked by suffering in our people, and here we have gathered today to pray to God for all our brothers and sisters who suffered in the March pogrom in Kosovo and Metohija, to pray for their souls, but at the same time, on our knees, from the depths of our being, to pray to God that our people may remain and survive in Kosovo and Metohija, that they may be what they are. At the same time, we have gathered to pray for peace among all the people living in Kosovo and Metohija, to pray to God to open the deepest point of the heart of every person who is there and from which they can understand and see every person as their neighbor, regardless of which nation they belong to and how they pray to God. We have gathered to pray to God for all the people living in Kosovo and Metohija to understand that every person is an icon of God and that everyone, regardless of their name, exists next to us and before us so that we can affirm ourselves as people who have heard the commandment of Christ, in which all other commandments can be summarized, which is the commandment of loving with one's whole being towards God and towards another person as towards oneself: Love your neighbor as yourself. This is the principle of life for which every person was created, His Holiness Patriarch Mr. Porfiry and emphasized:
– We have gathered to pray for all those who suffered in the March pogrom in Kosovo and Metohija, and we ask God not to let it happen to us that instead of the commandment of God, which reads: Love your neighbor as yourself, we begin to proclaim a diametrically different principle of life, which is: Hate your neighbor with your whole being. It is very important that we accept this into our souls, because the forces of this world and demonic forces want to relativize the word of God to us one after another and to say: Do not exaggerate in loving your neighbor as yourself and that your neighbor is every human being. They want to relativize that word of God to us and to convince us that the correct way of life is to hate the other, to hate our neighbor. We therefore pray for the repose of all those who suffered in the March pogrom and for peace in Kosovo and Metohija. We pray that people there will see each other as a gift from God, that they will understand that they cannot live without each other and that they need each other.

– However, praying in this way for the people living in Kosovo and Metohija is also our prayer for all our brothers and sisters wherever they live, both here in Belgrade and throughout Serbia. We pray that everyone understands, first of all we – the priests, then everyone else, that we need each other and that the greatest gift and blessing from God is that we are different, that we are all unique, that each of us has our own special stamp, a special gift and that we have the opportunity to understand and see one and the same thing in a different way, i.e. in our own way, in a special way. There is no greater gift from God than that, and it was not given to us to separate us and to oppose each other because we are different, but rather it was given to us precisely because it is a gift from God, it was given to us as an opportunity to approach each other, to have a path towards each other based on our gift, our talent, our abilities and our possibilities, to be able to listen to each other with an open heart, to express our opinions in relation to each other and to correct each other to the extent necessary so that in our diversity we can be one, not identical, with each other. Different can and should be one, which is what the word of God calls us to do, that all may be one, that all may be together, and without Christ at the center of our life and our lives, this is not possible – emphasized Patriarch Porphyrios and concluded:
– If Christ is not the starting point, if he is not the content and not the end, then everything we have talked about – therefore the gift of God, diversity as a gift of God – is a reason for complete disintegration, for a universal confrontation of all with all, for complete fragmentation and, ultimately, deafening to the word of God that all – with their particularities, gifts and talents, transforming everything and everyone – can be one. Therefore, let us not turn the commandment of God, which reads: We shall love our neighbor as ourselves – and every man as an icon of God is our brother and is our sister – into the commandment of a fallen human being: Hate your neighbor as yourself.
His Holiness the Patriarch was concelebrated by the most esteemed gentlemen, Bishops of Budimlje-Nikšić Methodius and Vicar of Lipljan Dositej and the priests of the Archbishopric of Belgrade-Karlovac.
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Today marks twenty-one years since 4,012 Serbs were expelled from Kosovo and Metohija in the destructive attacks of Albanian extremists, and most of them have not returned to their homes to this day. In the wave of violence in Kosovo and Metohija, 19 people were killed, eight of whom were Serbs, while 11 Albanians died in clashes with members of international security forces. At least 170 Serbs were injured, as were dozens of members of international forces who clashed with local Albanians while protecting Serbs and their property. Around 800 Serbian houses were demolished, and extremists particularly targeted Serbian Orthodox shrines. 35 churches and monasteries were destroyed, and in these unprecedented acts of vandalism, some of which were broadcast live on local Kosovo television (such as in Podujevo), numerous icons and immovable cultural assets that had survived centuries of Ottoman occupation and world wars were destroyed forever. The pogrom was particularly painful for the Serbian people and their Church because it all happened not during the chaos of war, but in the presence of thousands of members of the international peacekeeping forces KFOR, the Kosovo Police, and UNMIK, none of whom publicly took responsibility for their numerous shortcomings.
Source: Serbian Orthodox Church