Six bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church have asked the Synod to schedule the Assembly in order the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) to determine and take a unique position on the solution for Kosovo, the Belgrade daily Blic writes today.
According to the daily, the bishops have been sending requests in the last two months, but the Synod did not specifically answer any of the bishops.
“The request to hold the Assembly is not directly related to the signing of the Appeal for Kosovo and Metohija, and which certain bishops and clergy initialled it. The Assembly has been seeked much earlier than Appeal was compiled,” Blic writes.
According to one of the bishops who have not been named, the request for holding the Assembly “is neither for nor against President Vucic, and it would be wrong to interpret it so.”
“The maintenance of the Assembly is a natural sequence of events, a responsible attitude and a response to the situation in which the people, and the state are,” said the Bishop, adding that “the Kosovo issue enters its final phase and it is necessary for the Church to determine towards the events.”
“The Church has to say uniquely, what is the boundary line to which we will go, to give an Assembly’s response to the invitation of the president for internal dialogue on the Kosovo issue,” said the Bishop, Blic writes.
One of the Bishops who did not ask for the Assembly was close to the opinion of those who were, because, as he points out, the fact that while there is no unique, the Assembly’s position, “the Bishops act according to their will and conscience”.
“So, we have signatures on the Appeal, but so we also had the appearance of the Metropolitan which caused various reactions in public, unnecessary for the Church. The Church does not need politicization,” says the Bishop whose eparchy is in Serbia, Blic says.
