Serbian Patriarch Porfirije: Let's overcome divisions and extend hand to each other

BELGRADE - In his Christmas greetings to believers, Patriarch Porfirije of the Serbian Orthodox Church said on Tuesday Christmas was a holiday of peace when "we need to overcome divisions and extend a hand to each other."

Inspired by the joy of Christmas and Christ's peace, "we call on everyone that we overcome divisions, embrace each other and extend a hand to each other and understand that, in a word, we are necessary to each other," Porfirije noted in a Christmas epistle.

He added that the situation in Serbia was currently complex and difficult because internal political tensions had led to deep divisions within the society and mistrust amongst the people, with differences in opinions increasingly frequently developing into irrational hatred.

"What is especially concerning is the loss of national and cultural identity, which calls into doubt the continuity of the historical and spiritual self-concept of our nation and cannot be explained as being exclusively a result of external influences. With that comes economic uncertainty and a demographic decline: Serbia faces a pronounced negative fertility rate, and as a result, one of the highest depopulation rates in the world, as well as an increasingly pronounced aging of its population," Porfirije noted.

"We live in a time of increasingly deep religious, ethnic and cultural divisions, in a world of constantly growing geopolitical tensions and a world where wars are increasingly frequently becoming a means of resolving economic and political conflicts. A change of the global order and the fight amongst big powers for prevalence are giving rise to instability, a security crisis and a fear of an uncertain future," he added.

This is accompanied by economic insecurity, inflation, growing inequality, poverty, hunger and uncontrolled exhaustion of natural resources, while technological transformations bring new ethical dilemmas and give rise to digital isolation, apparent presence without real togetherness, Porfirije noted.

"All that leads to a crisis of trust in institutions and the media, to relativisation of the truth, to growing anxiety and loneliness, as well as to a loss of the sense of life in many people today," he said.

He urged the believers not to be afraid because "with all its fractures, conflicts and fears, the world we live in is no longer self-sufficient and self-explainable, nor is it left to the blind forces of history."

"With the birth of Christ, God has entered the very heart of human history and shown that evil, however aggressive and widespread it may be, does not have the final say. Fear arises where man thinks he is alone, and the birth of Christ, our Saviour, reveals to us that we are no longer alone and that we will never be alone again," the patriarch said in the epistle, concluding it with the traditional Christmas greeting of "Peace of God, Christ is born!"