Serb President Tadic seeks Papal visit

Serbian President Boris Tadic today met with Pope Benedict XVI and said he hoped the pontiff could visit the country “very soon,” but said certain pre-conditions had to be negotiated first with the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said Tadic had invited the Pope to visit, and that the Pope had thanked him for the invitation and “expressed hope that such a visit could take place in the future.”

Tadic told reporters that the possibility of a papal visit was raised during his 25-minute meeting – the first between a Pope and a Serb president. There were some “pre-conditions” that had to be worked out first, Tadic said, referring to an agreement with the Serbian Orthodox Church to invite the pontiff.

A Pope has never visited Serbia – a traditional ally of Russia – partly due to an enduring rivalry between the Catholics and the Orthodox, the two traditional Christian churches separated since the Great Schism in 1054.

“I have a very significant dialogue with the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Serbian Orthodox Church is a part of our society, and I appreciate the role of the Serbian Orthodox Church in our country. But this is a very specific dialogue between two Christian churches,” Tadic told reporters after the meeting.

“I hope we are going to organise this visit as soon as possible,” Tadic said.

He said his visit to Rome was a sign that relations between the two churches had improved.

“The dialogue is much better than before,” he said, noting that representatives of the two churches would be meeting soon to launch a new ecumenical initiative.

Benedict has made reaching out to Orthodox churches a priority of his pontificate.

The president of Serbia-Montenegro, Svetozar Marovic, had tried in 2003 to organise a visit by late Pope John Paul II to Serbia-Montenegro, but the head of Serbia’s Orthodox church, Patriarch Pavle, suggested then that he would not be welcome.

Hard-liners and conservatives in Serbia often perceived John Paul II as a foe who contributed to the violent break-up of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s because of the Vatican’s quick recognition of predominantly Roman Catholic Croatia.

While John Paul II did visit some Orthodox countries during his pontificate, Serbia, like Russia, had remained closed to the idea of a papal visit.

The Vatican’s daily news bulletin reported today’s audience with Tadic without giving details.

Tadic said he and the Pope also discussed the “huge problem” of the fate of Serbs in Kosovo, which has been an international protectorate since 1999 when a Nato air war forced former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to end a crackdown against rebel ethnic Albanians in the province.

Serb officials have hoped the Vatican could influence ethnic Albanians in Kosovo to improve situation for the minority Serbs and preserve Serb Orthodox monasteries that were destroyed during a rampage by ethnic Albanians in March 2004.

The future status of the region, which borders Albania and Macedonia, remains a contested issue and UN mediated talks on its future are to begin in December.