“With its influence, the Holy See can contribute to the protection of Serbian holy places in Kosovo”

The State Secretary of the Holy See, Cardinal Parolin, has long been well acquainted with the real situation in Kosovo and Metohija, including first-hand knowledge, so after his visit to Serbia, he will surely incorporate his conclusions constructively and rationally into the direction of the overall international performance of Vatican diplomacy.

Especially on the broadest level of necessity that all the suffering of Serbs in the Kosovo parastatal casemate, including spiritual and cultural, should finally be treated as the gravity of the circumstances demands, Darko Tanasković, former ambassador to the Vatican, tells Kosovo Online.

The position of the Serbian people and the Serbian religious and cultural heritage in Kosovo was one of the topics during Parolin’s conversation with the President and Prime Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić and Miloš Vučević, as well as with the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Porfiri, and Tanasković states that given the specific dual nature The Holy See, as a church and as a state, “the position of the Serbian community in ‘Kosovo’ and the state of the Orthodox spiritual and cultural heritage in this quasi-state, is not bilaterally viewed and considered not only as a political, social and legal issue, but also as an unenviable contemporary destiny of a Christian nation and its sanctuaries”.

– The Vatican has always looked at the Kosovo-Metohija problem and treated it in the configuration of the inter-civilizational horizon, not neglecting, of course, other aspects either. That is why the exchange of opinions about the situation and processes in ‘Kosovo’ by our officials, and the highest church leadership, with the State Secretary of the Holy See, was certainly meaningful and in a special way significant – Tanasković assesses.

Regarding whether the Vatican can be an ally of Belgrade when it comes to the protection of the Serbian medieval cultural heritage in Kosovo, for which there are attempts to rename it to “Kosovo”, our interlocutor says that the Vatican has previously expressed its willingness to, in ways and mechanisms that are available, concretely contribute to the protection and restoration of the Serbian medieval spiritual and cultural heritage in Kosovo.

– This readiness, due to the combination of various factors, both objective and subjective, has so far yielded relatively small results. There were also examples where the representatives of the local Catholic clergy in ‘Kosovo’, ethnic Albanians, were sporadically involved in a campaign of divisiveness and attempts to convert to Catholicism, i.e. to ‘state’ some of our holy places and monuments, which should not be in the spirit of Christian ecumenism, on which Pope Francis has been emphatically insisting on since the beginning of his pontificate, and which was repeated by Cardinal Parolin in his addresses during the just ended visit, especially clearly in Sremski Karlovci. There is no doubt that the Holy See, if it truly activates the potential of its influence, can effectively contribute to the protection of Serbian sanctuaries and universally valuable cultural assets in ‘Kosovo’ – points out Tanasković.

When asked whether the position of the Vatican, which does not recognize Kosovo, has an influence on some countries in the world, our interlocutor says that the influence of the Holy See in today’s changed and significantly despiritualized world at a new turning point is objectively reduced compared to some earlier times, but that is still considerable.

– Especially in countries that are not only nominally and traditionally, but actually Catholic today, such as, for example, many in Central and Latin America, and some in Africa. There, when taking foreign policy positions, the position of the Holy See is also taken into account as a landmark. Bearing in mind, first of all, the long-term interests of the Catholic Church, but also the reality of international relations, the Vatican opted for a principled and prudent policy towards the issue of ‘Kosovo’, which excludes any kind of drift motivated by some ephemeral conjuncture, much less pressure from outside or persistent by lobbying, or more precisely by flying around, Kosovo ‘friends’ and officials from Pristina. During Parolin’s visit, that commitment was confirmed by his commitment to the fact that all issues can and must be resolved exclusively through dialogue – says Tanasković.

As he adds, the second and real problem, for which Cardinal Parolin is the least responsible, is that NATO, in connection with the opening of the bridge on the Ibar, and Peter Stano, calling on “both sides” to exercise restraint, and Christopher Hill, and Miroslav Lajčak.

– Doesn’t ‘dialogue’, in this case, have another meaning, different from the one in sentences, like the famous one-time business invention ‘consensus minus one’, when the FRY had to be suspended in Oebs? – says Tanasković.