Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

international forces. Amen.” 145 Mikhail Gorbachev was invited to defend the
rights of Orthodox countries and Orthodox peoples, in accordance with to
the tradition of Russian Orthodox tsars. 146 The conference’s resolution said
that the anti-Orthodox policies and Uniate crusades instigated by the Vatican
generated tragic conflicts, such as the current church strife in western
Ukraine and “in another Slavic land of Croatia, where the Catholics slaughtered
700,000 Orthodox Serbs.” 147 The document said that “once again in
history, Roman Catholicism has become a weapon in the hands of anti-
Christian dark forces.” 148
Continuing the dynamic pan-Orthodox campaign, a high delegation of
the Serbian Church visited Moscow in May 1991. On that occasion Alexei
II gave his apostolic blessing to the newly founded “Society of Russo-Serbian
Friendship” and received a joint delegation of the Serbian Orthodox Church
and the Belgrade government. The Pravoslavlje reported on the meeting under
the headline “Now It Is Time for All Orthodox Peoples to Join Forces.” 149
Further, on 13 December 1991, during the escalation of the Serbo-Croatian
war in Croatia, the patriarch of Serbia, Pavle, released a circular letter to
all Orthodox churches seeking the protection of Croatian Serbs from “the
Croatian neo-fascist regime—the successor of the Ustasˇas who massacred
700,000 Orthodox Serbs in World War II.” 150
The Serbian Church delegation attended the Orthodox ecclesiastical summit
conference convened in Istanbul on 12–15 March 1992. At the conference,
14 Orthodox churches discussed current ecclesiastical and world affairs.
In a public statement released by the participants in this historic
convention, Orthodox church leaders wrote:
[A]fter the collapse of the godless communist system that severely persecuted
Orthodox Churches, we expected fraternal support or at least understanding
for grave difficulties that had befallen us. ...[I]nstead, Orthodox
countries have been targeted by Roman Catholic missionaries and
advocates of Uniatism. These came together with Protestant fundamentalists
...andsects. 151
The conference issued an appeal for a more respectful and influential role
of Orthodox countries in the process of European unification and postcommunist
transitions. The Orthodox church summit conference called for peace
in the current conflicts in Yugoslavia and in the Middle East but did not
include the Serbian Church’s proposal to condemn the “Croatian aggression
against the Serbian people.” 152 After the Istanbul conference, the Serbian
Church maintained the same course in foreign policy, though not always
overtly, continuously anti-West and seeking closer ties with the churches of
Russia and Greece and advancing the idea of the Orthodox commonwealth.
153
In the meantime on the home front, the Serbian Orthodox Church sought
contacts with the Catholic Church in order to negotiate the partition of
160 balkan idols