Hundreds of thousands of people came to bid farewell to Serbia's Patriarch Pavle as the country's Orthodox Church leader was buried in a Belgrade suburb on Thursday.
Patriarch Pavle, elected to head the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1990, died Sunday at 95 of cardiac arrest during his sleep after being treated for two years in the Belgrade Military Medical Academy. Serbia held a period of national mourning from Monday to Wednesday.
Today's funeral service for Pavle was held in the St. Sava Cathedral in the capital Belgrade by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro and the Littoral. It was attended by Serbian President Boris Tadic and top officials from other countries, including top clergy.
The patriarch was then buried in the Rakovica Monastery, as defined by the Serbian Church's Holy Synod in line with his will.
Metropolitan Amfilohije, who earlier performed Pavle's duties during the patriarch's illness, will be acting patriarch until a new leader is elected. The election will take place not earlier than 40 days after Pavle's death.
His Holiness Archbishop of Pec, Metropolitan of Belgrade and Karlovci, Serbian Patriarch Pavle was the oldest living leader of an Eastern Orthodox church. He called for peace and reconciliation in the 1990s during the inter-ethnic conflicts that resulted in the breakup of Yugoslavia.
In 2000, the Serbian Church, which had previously abstained from confrontation, openly called on Slobodan Milosevic, then president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, to resign after NATO air raids put an end to his crackdown on Kosovo Albanians.
President Tadic on Sunday called the death of the patriarch "a huge loss" and said Pavle "united the nation," and the Russian Orthodox Church's Archpriest Nikolai Balashov said the Serbs honored Pavle "as a living saint."
MOSCOW, November 19 (RIA Novosti)
