Belgrade, August 7, 2000 (IKA) — From August 4 to 7, the president of the Croatian Conference of Bishops, Archbishop Josip Bozanić of Zagreb, visited Yugoslavia, including the Srijem portion of the Đakovo and Srijem Diocese (within the territory of the SR Yugoslavia), that according to Church law is within the Zagreb Metropolitan Archdiocese.
On August 4, following a brief stay at the Srijem Vicariate in Petrovaradin, where he met with Catholic Bishop Đuro Gašparović who was appointed vicar of Srijem last year, Archbishop Bozanić conducted an evening Mass at the famous Marian shrine in Tekije. The next day, Saturday, August 5, on the feast of Our Lady of the Snows, he conducted the main Mass.
“Today we want to renew the memory of the martyrs while at the same time we want to respond to the call of the Holy Father and purify our memory of everything that blocks our path to God. We want to cleanse our memory of hatred, enmity and that which leads a person into darkness. We want to liberate ourselves from all of that before God because we know that this is the only path for the salvation of ourselves and particularly for the salvation of the children and young people for whose future we pray … We want to leave it all somewhere and pray for God to open a new future for us, a future of a new life, a future of a new community, a future that will make it possible for us to preserve our religious, cultural and national identity and likewise for us to respect the religious, cultural and national identity of others, so that feel a unity before God and before his Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is the Mother of great ecumenicism, the mother of great community” said Archbishop Bozanić during his sermon.
That afternoon, on the eve of the feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, Archbishop Bozanić met with the parishioners of the Parish of St. Demetrius in Sremska Mitrovica. On Sunday, August 6, in the old cathedral of Christ the King, he concelebrated a Mass with Archbishop Franc Perko and priests from Belgrade. At the beginning of the Mass, Archbishop Perko greeted the guest from Zagreb, expressing the wish for his “ecumenical mission to yield fruits in bringing the Churches and peoples closer together.”
The president of the Croatian Conference of Bishops, Archbishop Josip Bozanić, also met that day with the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Pavle, in the Belgrade Patriarchate. “We spoke as people with faith in the gospel, with faith in Jesus Christ, in the Holy Trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, which we proclaim with words and life to the faithful and people of good will,” said Archbishop Bozanić after meeting with Patriarch Pavle, recalling the “evangelical principle that we share in common — do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”
Patriarch Pavle’s remarks to the press after this meeting included the following: “If people would act according to this principle in the world, how much suffering would we be spared! We would have fewer prisons, hospitals and other afflictions. This is the reason why the Lord Jesus came, in order to teach us that we are always people, God’s nation. This is our common position, our duty and our faith. Greeting Archbishop Bozanić, the priesthood and faithful in Croatia, I wish them all every genuine good from the Lord, which we all need, and peace, justice, truth and love, because our God is the God of justice and peace.”
Archbishop Bozanić then said to the press: “I came here to visit the faithful in Srijem and today we have had the opportunity to speak together with the Patriarch and the episcopes about our Churches, about everything facing our Churches at the dawn of the Third Millennium. Our faithful who live together in these territories expect a joint statement from us. We feel that we have to speak about many things in order to be able to help the faithful in their lives. We also feel that in the name of the gospel, we must speak publicly because we have common positions, common ideals, and it is necessary for our public to hear this and to be motivated by this in their activities.” Archbishop Bozanić also mentioned that by meeting with Patriarch Pavle in the Belgrade Patriarchate, “we are paying our respects to the Church of God that he represents.” He also expressed the hope for “further meetings and concrete joint tasks.”
By making this visit, Archbishop Bozanić was returning the visit made by Patriarch Pavle to Zagreb March 1999. Other participants included the Catholic bishops of Đakovo and Srijem, Marin Srakić and Đuro Gašparović, and the Serbian Orthodox metropolitan of Zagreb-Ljubljana, Jovan Pavlović, the metropolitan of Bačka, Irinej Bulović, and the episcope of Hrvostan, Atanasije Rakita.
Archbishop Bozanić spent August 7 in Šumadija with a member of the Holy Episcopal Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Episcope (Bishop) Sava of Šumadija, on which occasion they visited the cathedral in Kragujevac and the monasteries of Kalenić and Grnčarica. This concluded the archbishop’s four-day visit and he returned to Zagreb that evening.