Patriarch Irinej: I support the change of the name of Serbian Orthodox Church, I am not moving to Kosovo

Serbian Patriarch Irinej said that he supported the idea to add the Pec Patriarchate to the official name of Serbian Orthodox Church (SPS), however, he said that he won't be moving to Kosovo.

Serbian Orthodox Church will change the name?

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- The Patriarch can't move to Pec, Belgrade is the administrative center after all. Pec remains as a history of our past where Patriarchs and archbishops were and no matter what happened, Pec remains the historical center of our church. Everything that contributes to preserving the history, the connection of our church with Pec and Kosovo, we will accept it - the Patriarch said to Kurir.

Irinej stressed that the change of name is a very good proposal and that he would like to see it accepted.

Besides the official name change, the new proposition of the constitution of SPS brings many new things.

It is envisaged that the first man of the Serbian Orthodox Church bears the name of the Archbishop of Pec, the Metropolitan of Belgrade-Karlovac and the patriarchs of the Serbian and the Maritime countries. A specially formed commission worked on creating the new constitution of SPC, chaired by the Metropolitan Amfilohije, and the draft was sent to all archbishops.

Foto: Tanjug/Oksana Toskić

The election procedure for the new Patriarch of the SPC will be changed with the new constitution, the voting will be done secretly, with the mandatory two-thirds of the votes. If no candidate secures that kind of support, the voting will be repeated seven times at most. If no candidate receives that kind of support, two of the candidates with the highest number of votes will be chosen in the seventh cycle.

Patriarch Irinej like the current way of choosing the Patriarch, the voting with "apostolic draw", the random choice of one out of three envelopes with the names of the candidates.

- About the proposition to change the way the new Patriarch is chosen, I would personally prefer for the current way to remain. That is my opinion, but we will see what will be the decision of the commission will decide. Those are all propositions, we will see what will be adopted - the Patriarch Irinej said.

(Telegraf.co.uk)