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Letter: Patriarch Pavle obituary

This article is more than 14 years old

David Lovelace writes: As the spiritual leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church throughout the Balkan wars of the 1990s, Patriarch Pavle (obituary, 4 December) was closely associated with the military ambitions of Serbian nationalism. He regarded , Radovan Karadzic and other indicted Serb war criminals as national heroes and Christian warriors.

In September 1997, Pavle signed a declaration to the UN Security Council demanding suspension of the proceedings against Karadzic before the Hague tribunal. The medieval character of Pavle's church was brought home to a wider public in photographs showing orthodox priests blessing paramilitaries and their weapons. For example, in 1992, Priest Jelenko Micovic was shown brandishing a machine gun next to a tank emblazoned with the Serbian flag in 1992. Pavle later made him a bishop. In June 2005, a film was shown on Serbian television in which the notorious Scorpion paramilitary unit were seen killing young Bosnians at Srebrenica, after having first been blessed at the Privina Glava monastery. Having remained silent for 10 years over the worst atrocity in Europe since Nazi occupation, Pavle was forced to issue an acknowledgement merely saying: "Lord, do not let it happen again."

After the Dayton agreement of 1995, Pavle remained active in nationalist politics, especially in respect of Kosovo, which he and his fellow bishops regarded as God-given Serbian territory. In October 2004 he wrote an open letter denouncing the elections in Kosovo and called on Serbs there to boycott the polls. He was an arch-conservative on social issues, urging women to stay at home and breed to increase the Serbian population.

With Pavle's death there is hope that the Serbian people can shake themselves free of the medieval mindset that led to so many atrocities being committed in their name and for which much of the nation remains in denial.

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