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The Serbian Orthodox Church has chosen a new patriarch close to the Serbian authorities, who will replace Irinej, who died of a coronavirus in November, Agence France-Presse reported.
The Serbian Orthodox Church enjoys significant influence in Serbia, a Balkan country with a vast majority of seven million people of Orthodox faith, the agency writes.
The new patriarch is the Metropolitan of Zagreb-Ljubljana Porfirio, who is said to be close to the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić, as well as the late Patriarch Irinej.
“He is someone who has been close to the authorities for a long time, close to Prime Minister Ana Brnabić and close to Vučić,” analyst Draško Đenović told AFP.
His election comes at a time when Serbia and Kosovo are under pressure from US President Joseph Biden and the European Union to continue a stalled dialogue on normalizing relations, 13 years after the province declared its independence, that Belgrade He does not recognize.
France Press estimates that the new patriarch could be more “flexible” than his predecessor in Kosovo, which is the cradle of the Serbian Orthodoxy of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Djenovic, who said that Porphyry, born in 1961, was a “young patriarch”, expressed the expectation that his views would be “more moderate than the views of his predecessors, which is why Vucic wanted his election.”
“Older bishops personify difficult positions in Kosovo … The situation is completely different among young bishops living in the 21st century,” the analyst said.
France Press recalled that at one point, the Serbian Orthodox Church opposed Vučić’s idea of exchanging territory to solve the Kosovo problem.
