The Pravblog channel published the text of the appeal of the Vidovdan Pilgrimage organization in support of the UOC:
“Beloved in Christ God, the people of God of Ukraine!
Today, with a prayer for you, for the persecuted Ukrainian Orthodox Church, we passed through the city of the Mother of God – Belgrade, the capital city of all Serbs. Heading from the cherished temple of St. Sava on Vracar to the Monastery of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (8 km), we symbolically passed by the Ukrainian Embassy in Belgrade, praying for the protection of your shrines, which are also our shrines.
Focusing on the words of the holy Apostle Paul (1. Cor. 12: 25-27), we are closely following what is happening with your Holy Church, we care about you and suffer together with you who are suffering persecution. When they slander and threaten His Beatitude, Metropolitan Onufry of Kyiv and All Ukraine, they slander us, we are also threatened. When they expel, imprison and beat your bishops and priests, pour filth over them, threaten them with weapons, then they expel you, throw you in prisons, mutilate, inflict wounds on us too. When your believers are maimed, beaten, expelled from the holy temples, they maim and beat us, take away the shrines from us too. Weapons aimed at you are also aimed at our Serbian Orthodox chest. The tear gas that suffocates you in your temples also eats away at our throats and our lungs. With the children of your priests expelled from parish houses and we are standing in the street with nothing! With your temples burning in the fire of hatred, our shrines also burned down.
In a few days, for the 17th time in a row, we will go on a pilgrimage to Kosovo with fasting and prayer, and for the 9th time we will continue our journey to our and your holy Hilandar Lavra, in order to be on the Cross Glory of the Panteleimon Monastery and, if God wills, in the Transfiguration of the Lord climb to the top of Athos. This year we dedicate 1100 km of pilgrimage to you, your confession and martyrdom for the faith of Christ, for your steadfast stay in holy Orthodoxy. Never and in no case fall away from Christ the Savior into schism or union.
When it was most difficult for us, the Serbian Orthodox Church, when the prince of this world wanted to steal holy things, Metropolitan Onufry came to us in the 2020s and led the St. Simon Liturgy in Podgorica. We filially ask the hierarchs and priests of our Holy Church to follow the example of our Primate of the Serbian Patriarch Porfiry, as well as Metropolitan Ioannikius, Bishop Irinei of Bach, Bishops Gerasim, Simeon, Nikanor, Photius, Sergius – and publicly raise their voice in defense of the violated fundamental rights of believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Churches. We also ask professors, students and theologians of the Serbian Orthodox faculties and seminaries to speak publicly in defense of the Kyiv Theological Academy and Seminary (1615).
Today she is being expelled from the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra – Slavic Jerusalem, and tomorrow they will ban the one that taught our saints – Dositheus of Zagreb and Simeon Daibabsky, metropolitans, archimandrites and archpriests.
Chosen by the Governor of our Christian family, today with the face of Your holy miraculous icon of Pochaev on our chest, we set off from the cherished place of our archpastor Savva to your sanctuary. We beg you, accept our prayers of repentance and protect the faithful people and the shrines of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from persecution and plunder, and us along with them.
All-Holy One, Stronghold of the True Faith, we pray to You, help us, for Your glory and Your holy miraculous icon of Pochaev, to go a long way to Your garden – Holy Mount Athos, for the sake of protecting Holy Orthodoxy in Ukraine.
Organization “Pilgrimage Vidovdan”
May 13, 2023″.
