Cardinal Parolin’s visit was undoubtedly of great importance on a bilateral level, primarily in connection with pointing out to the Holy See all the suffering of the Serbs and their sanctuaries in Kosovo, its broader sense of progress in advocating for the promotion of peace in a world that is increasingly tragic and ominous deserves special attention—torn apart by war conflicts.
The Vatican has assessed that the occasion of commemorating the Peace of Karlovac from 1699 is the right opportunity to send a strong symbolic message of the necessity for Christians, first of all, and then all other contemporaries, to unite in a common struggle for peace, taught by the success of those who 325 years ago, in the conditions of a long and bloody war, managed to find a way to it through negotiations.
There is no doubt that Pope Francis is aware of the urgency of such a call, and Cardinal Parolin was a convincing interpreter of his truly ecumenical message. In all his addresses, especially in Sremski Karlovci, he emphasised the universal human need for peace, leaving all the divisions by which humanity is objectively divided out of sight. The Secretary of State resolutely gave that basic tone to the atmosphere and message of the meeting, and all other state and church officials, especially those from Serbia and the Serbian Orthodox Church, spontaneously spoke out in full unison with such determination.
Even if the organisers of this spiritual manifestation from the Diocese of Srem had the strength to resist the order of political correctness and not exclude representatives of Russia from the list of guests, one of the participants in the long-ago negotiations in Karlovci, the common message from the meeting would sound incomparably more convincing.
by prof. PhD Darko Tanasković
Islamologist, Orientalist philologist, university professor, writer, literary translator, academician and diplomat, former ambassador of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Republic of Serbia in the Vatican