PATRIARCH PAVLE: The Saint We Knew - 891

If one were to ask the Serbs which personality marked the interval between the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the new, third millennium – that crucial, almost fatal epoch in the history of their people - some might first remember Slobodan Milošević, others Zoran Đinđić, or perhaps Milan Panić. All would mention Dobrica Ćosić, not the greatest, but certainly the most engaged and influential Serbian writer, at least in recent years. But that would only be at first. Later, after calm and due reflection, the response would be different. The majority, even unbelievers, would come up with one name: His Holiness, Serbian Patriarch Pavle, successor to St. Sava and his worthy follower on the throne of the Serbian Orthodox Church, the monk whom the nation during his lifetime called “the walking saint”. Throughout all 800 years of orthodoxy and veneration of St. Sava, that same nation never honoured anyone else with this description. This book about Patriarch Pavle, his long and astonishing life in the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and later in communist and post-communist Yugoslavia and Serbia, mainly about his works and then about his words, is the product of one of the most distinguished Serbian journalists of our time. The writer, Đorđe Randelj, a priest’s son from Novi Sad, is the author of 26 books of essays, political features, commentaries and discussion on history, religion, anthropology and the character of the Balkans and its peoples. Đorđe Randelj discovered and got to know Patriarch Pavle in 1989 in Prizren when the latter was bishop of Raško-Prizren in Kosovo and Metohija. Randelj stayed on in Kosovo, working as a reporter, both during the war and in the time leading up to it. Their friendship, if it could be so called, considering an age difference of forty years, continued in close encounters and conversations after 1990 in the Belgrade Patriarchy, when Bishop Pavle was elected 44th Patriarch of the Serbs, and lasted three decades until the Patriarch’s death in 2009 at the Military Academy Hospital in Belgrade. Deeply aware of the great and unique privilege accorded him to drink from this living spring of knowledge and divine worship, Randelj will never forget these conversations, the Patriarch’s wisdom, his moral teachings, speeches, addresses and sermons. And so he wrote this book in order that others too would not forget. - Mirjana Vladisavljev
ASIN: 152191933X
VSKU: BVV.152191933X.VG
Condition: Very Good
Author/Artist:Randelj, Djordje|Thompson-Popović, Mary
Binding: Paperback