Croatia: Card. Bozanic, best wishes to new Orthodox Patriarch Porfirije. “Action of Divine Providence”

“It is with great joy that I learned the news that the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church has elected his holiness as Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church”, wrote Card. Josip Bozanic, Archbishop of Zagreb, in his message of best wishes to the new Serbian Patriarch Porfirije. The election is seen by the Cardinal as “the action of Divine Providence and the sign of the Holy Spirit”. Card. Bozanic recalls their “pilgrimage together”, when then Serbian Patriarch was Orthodox Metropolitan of Zagreb and Ljubljana, “on 12 January, from Zagreb Cathedral to the Orthodox Cathedral of the Transfiguration”. The Cardinal hopes that Porfirije’s election “may first of all be a blessing for the sister Serbian Orthodox Church. May the Holy Spirit, who renews us, inspire new ways of God’s love and charity, new understanding and appreciation, acceptance and forgiveness to open new pages of fruitful cooperation in communion for the good of the faithful entrusted to us”. “The nations we belong to in these parts of the European continent – Card. Bozanic concluded -, in our time fraught with challenges, expect of us, Christians, to be salt of the earth and light of the world, heralds of evangelical hope”.
Valentina Bombelli