DIOCESAN ASSEMBLY HELD IN MONROEVILLE

Monroeville, Pa - With the blessings of His Grace Bishop Dr. Mitrophan the diocese of Eastern America held their annual assembly on Friday, February 29 and Saturday, March 1, 2008 at St. Nicholas Serbian Orthodox Church in Monroeville, PA. Despite wintry weather the assembly was very well attended by clergy and delegates from throughout the diocese.

The official business of the assembly took place on Friday evening after the service of the Invocation of the Holy Spirit and continued Saturday morning. Besides discussing diocesan issues and future plans, the assembly also dedicated time to the current crisis in Kosovo. A motion was made and passed by the assembly to donate $100,000 from diocesan funds to the suffering people of Kosovo.

The Holy Hierarchical Divine Liturgy was served on the following morning, Soul Saturday. After a light ontinental breakfast the work of the assembly continued with guest speaker Very Reverend Archimandrite Polycarpos Rameas, priest at Holy Dormition Greek Orthodox Church of Oakmont, Pennsylvania.

The last items of the assembly were discussed after the lecture which included, among other things, the election of the Diocesan Council. After some discussion of the needs of the mission parishes in the South it was decided to hold next year’s assembly at St. Simeon the Myrrhflowing in North Miami, Florida.

RESOLUTIONS
Of the Diocesan Assembly of the
Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Eastern America
Monroeville, PA February 29-March 1, 2008

The clergy and congregational presidents and delegates of the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Eastern America meeting at St. Nicholas Serbian Orthodox Church in Monroeville, Pennsylvania under the omophor and archpastoral oversight of His Grace Bishop Dr. MITROPHAN, bring forth the following Greetings and Resolutions:

1. We greet and ask the blessing of His Holiness Serbian Patriarch PAVLE and all the hierarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church, who “rightly divide the word of truth”of Holy Orthodoxy, and who pastor the flock of Serbian Orthodox Christians throughout the world. We especially pray for the health His Holiness the Patriarch, that
God will grant him healing, strength, and health for many years. Eis polla eti, Despota!

2. We welcome the promulgation of the new constitution for the Serbian Orthodox Church in North and South America, which paves the way for the final administrative reunification of the Serbian Orthodox Church and the total healing of the tragic disunity which began hampering our common work and witness 45 years ago. We pray for and express our complete readiness for this total God-pleasing unity in all respects and aspects of Church life.

3. We greet and express our unity in Christ with all our brothers and sisters, Orthodox Christians both here in America and throughout the world. May we all rededicate ourselves and each other continuously to our Lord Jesus Christ as found in His Orthodox Faith and Church, and may we all be worthy of our high calling as we seek to bring this faith to the whole world. To this end we welcome concrete signs of this unity of faith and work, such as the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in the Americas and its activities such as International Orthodox Christian Charities, the Orthodox Christian Mission Center, the Orthodox Christian Fellowship for college students, and the Orthodox Christian Education Commission, and pledge our cooperation and support to them. May we all grow together in faith and love and spiritual understanding through our common
worship, our common Eucharist, and our common Christian ethos, which transcends every worldly division.

4. We declare with all our souls and minds that, as Serbian Orthodox Christians, our Kosovo and Metohija has always been—and is especially now—most dear to us as the soul and heart of all Serbs. With one voice we vehemently condemn the February 17, 2008 unilateral and illegal declaration of “independence”by the Albanian-dominated parliament of the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija. To our shame as Americans, this action, in contravention of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244, the United Nations Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, and all norms of international law, was taken with the tacit approval and at the de facto instigation of the United States government, which quickly led a number of nations in recognizing this illegal government as a new sovereign state.

Serbia’s intervention to put down the armed insurrection of Albanians in its Kosovo province has been used by the United States and other major western nations to justify NATO’s U.S.-led aggression of bombing Serbia for 78 days in 1999, and now to justify their recognition of this illegal “independence.”

Yet it has been evident for decades that Albanians in Kosovo have been bent on creating an ethnically pure Albanian state and eradicating all trace of Serbian history and culture in the very cradle of Serbian religious and
cultural identity. As is becoming more and more evident, these actions by the Albanians of Kosovo have enjoyed support from outside powers, including the United States, which emboldened them to undertake an armed insurrection, creating a dangerous situation in the province to which the Serbian army responded, as would the army of any country in the world in such a situation. It was and is totally wrong to impute any motive except the restoring of law and order to its province to this response of the Serbian army.

The United States and certain western European governments, choosing to call these measures taken by the Serbs ethnic cleansing, and their hysterical repetition of these patently false, one-sided and prejudicial charges in attempting to justify their bombing of Serbia in 1999 and their present recognition of the phony state of Kosovo does not make these charges true. These actions of the United States, on the contrary, make the repeated statements of high U.S. government officials that they remember with respect that Serbia was allied with the U.S. in two World Wars, and that they want good relations with Serbia, ring hollow and ironic. States do not treat allies as the United States has treated Serbia. They do not make entrance into the European community contingent upon renunciation of national sovereignty, national history, and national interests. It is a shame and a tragedy that the United States has taken its one consistent ally in the Balkans, a people which has consistently felt a close affinity with the American people and its values, and has demonized them and destroyed them.

The bombing of Serbia, the forced withdrawal of Serbian forces from Kosovo, and the placing of Kosovo under an international protectorate have all been used by the Albanians to advance their plans for an ethnically pure Kosovo through terror. Thousands upon thousands of Serbs and also other ethnicities have been forced to abandon their ancestral homes for exile, while many others have been killed or kidnapped and presumed dead. Those remaining have been forced into ethnic ghettos guarded by KFor for their own safety against the ongoing enmity of their Albanian neighbors, without prospects for meaningful employment, education, medical care, freedom of travel, or future improvement. 150 Serbian Orthodox churches, monasteries, cemeteries and cultural monuments, including some medieval masterpieces of art and architecture, and whole Serbian villages, have been destroyed in the past dozen years. It must be emphasized that fully a third of this wanton destruction was
carried out by Albanians since 1999—that is, as U.N, U.S. and NATO forces were present but too often looked the other way. We lament this fact, and the fact that our news media has neglected to cover these destructions and atrocities.

We reject the remarks of the United States Secretary of State to the effect that Serbs need to “get over” what Kosovo has always been and continues to be for the Serbs and accept the new reality imposed by U.S. and NATO force of arms. We lament and refuse to accept that the United States and some Western European countries consistently ignore and discount the thousand year history of Kosovo as being not only in Serbia, but being the very heart and soul of the Serbian people, the birthplace of the Serbian nation, looking only at the last few decades and emphasizing and over-emphasizing the Albanian majority in that part of Serbia. By doing this they have sanctioned the ethnic cleansing of Serbian Orthodox Christians from Kosovo and Metohija that took place during Tito’s communist regime, and which has continued as the world apathetically looked on. This Muslim Albanian ethnic cleansing of Serbian Orthodox Christians from Kosovo and Metohija has played a major role in achieving their disproportionate majority in the area. We lament and condemn this approval of the expulsion of Serbs from their ancestral homes and lands in Kosovo and Metohija, as well as the terrible expulsion of Serbs from Serbian Krajina (Croatia) with the help of the United States government.

In the face of this long history, the Serbian people have no reason to believe, as the western powers repeatedly claim, that the former leaders of the KLA, now transformed into the government of the new “independent”Kosovo, are now committed to the protection of human rights and elemental freedoms for their non-Albanian residents. We remind the United States that its Albanian clients in Kosovo, far from expressing peaceful intent, blackmailed the U.S. and NATO with the threat of violence against their own allies if they did not receive independence. We can see only the tragedy and outrage of terrorism rewarded as Kosovo is forcibly wrenched from its rightful place in Serbia and a new Islamic state is installed in Europe, in the holiest of places for the Christian Serbian people.

Therefore, we join Serbs and people of good will everywhere in rejecting this bogus independence of the Serbian province of Kosovo. We express our solidarity with His Grace Bishop Artemije of Raska and Prizren, his clergy, monastics, and his faithful flock, and all the embattled Serbs of Kosovo, whose presence reminds the world that Kosovo is Serbian, and who maintain and guard our greatest national shrines, including the Patriarchate
of Pec, Gracanica, and Visoki Decani. We pledge ourselves to support them morally, spiritually, and materially as they represent us all in this Serbian Holy Land. We also commend and thank those nations and organizations which have refused to recognize this illegal declaration of independence. Finally, we call
upon the United States and other architects of Kosovo independence to abandon this failed and illegitimate policy and return to the tried and tested norms of international law. With one voice and heart we join Serbs everywhere in proclaiming: Kosovo is, and will always be, Serbia!

5. We note with alarm recent attempts by certain international players to modify the Dayton accords to restrict the rights of Republika Srpska within Bosnia-Hercegovina, and we support Republika Srpska in its struggle to maintain its prerogatives in accord with international agreements.

6. We greet with joy the decision of our hierarchs that the 2009 National Church Assembly–Sabor of the Serbian Orthodox Church in North and South America will be held in our Eastern American Diocese, at St. George Church in Canton, Ohio. This will be the first Sabor held in our diocese, and we pledge to do everything
possible to make it a productive and fruitful one.

7. Finally, we thank our hosts of St. Nicholas Church in Monroeville, PA for their exemplary hospitality to all of us at this Diocesan Assembly.