Ratko Mladić, commander of the Army of Republika Srpska, was sentenced to life imprisonment by a first-instance verdict in 2017 before the Hague Tribunal for genocide and crimes against humanity; the verdict became final in 2021. He died on August 27, aged 84, while he was hospitalized in The Hague. Ten days later, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) personally led his funeral service in Belgrade, calling him in a speech a commander who “gave his life for freedom and survival of his people”. To understand why this sentence in Sarajevo and Potočari sounds like a message rather than a formality, you have to go back three decades.
Funeral Service with Military and State Symbols
This was not a quiet family funeral. Mladić’s hat and sabre were on his casket, with medals and a wreath in the colors of the Serbian flag placed in front, while members of the Serbian Armed Forces stood beside the casket. The Ministers of Government of Serbia, Milorad Dodik, the son of the President of Serbia, Danilo Vučić, and the Russian ambassador attended the funeral. Two days ago, a commemoration was held in the Home of the Army of Serbia, and the state is ready to provide all logistical support to the family, according to the President’s words.
The line between a private funeral and state honors was deliberately blurred, as the government retained the ability to act as a protector of Mladić’s legacy to the domestic public, while claiming to Brussels that it did not organize a state ceremony. In this arrangement, the Church is the only institution that did not distance itself from any part of it: the patriarch, not a parish priest, stands behind the casket.
The patriarch’s speech confirms this impression. Porfirije first emphasized that the “Orthodox church prays for everyone” and that Mladić in recent years “humbly confessed and took communion.” However, he then moved from prayer to an assessment: Mladić’s name, he said, will remain “deeply entrenched in the memory and prayers of the majority of Serbian Orthodox people,” who see him as a commander who “gave his life for freedom and survival of his people”. He called the war “ a terrible time” and prayed “for all those whose lives were extinguished,” without naming a single victim, location, or verdict. In the speech, there are no words such as Srebrenica, genocide, or The Hague.
The Association Majke Srebrenice (Eng. Mothers of Srebrenica) stated that the funeral threatens to become the largest fascist gathering in Europe in the last 70 years, with an appeal to institutions to react.
Excerpt from Patriarch Porfirij’s Speech at the Funeral Service
“The Orthodox Church prays for everyone. Today we stand over someone we know as a Christian, General Ratko, to whom priests bear witness and who in recent years humbly confessed and took Holy Communion – receiving the Body and Blood of Christ – hoping for God’s mercy and love, and who in the end passed away holding a cross to his chest.”
“We know his name will remain deeply entrenched in the memory and prayers of the majority of Serbian Orthodox people who see him as a soldier and commander who, in one difficult and tragic time, stood at the head of the army of his people and gave his life for the freedom and survival of his people.”
“We stand before the life which is impossible to separate from a terrible time, a horrific war, lost homes, lives, and graves. Therefore, while praying for the souls of the deceased, we are praying for all those whose lives were extinguished.”
The patriarch in his speech did not mention Srebrenica, genocide, or The Hague verdicts. He mentioned the victims of war only as “those whose lives were extinguished,” without names, locations, or perpetrators.
Church Before and During the War: From Ideological Preparation to Pale
Researchers who worked on this topic, including Vladimir Veljković and Edin Omerčić, do not describe the SOC as a monolithic actor in the war, but document the pattern of closeness with the political and military leadership of the Bosnian Serbs, warning about internal differences within the Church. Veljković assesses that the SOC, through certain priests and bishops, took part in ideological preparation for wars as early as the 1980s. During the Yugoslav wars, many actors invoked the SOC, sought its support, and often received it. Patriarch Pavle met with Karadžić and Mladić, while Metropolitan Amfilohije, in January, 1992, opened the doors of the Cetinje Monastery to Arkan and his armed members.
What happened after splitting with Milošević: the SOC leadership became very close to the Bosnian Serb leadership in Pale. Upon establishment of Republika Srpska, the Church becomes part of the state structure, bishops attend parliamentary sessions, and Karadžić states that he must consult with bishops and the patriarch for every decision. In August 1994, Patriarch Pavle, while visiting Republika Srpska, spoke against accepting the Contact Group’s peace plan.
Regional hierarchy was even more explicit. Bishop Vasilije Kačavenda of Zvornik-Tuzla gave warmongering speeches in Bijeljina and publicly supported Radovan Karadžić’s policy. Bishop Filaret of Mileševa was photographed in his clerical robes holding a machine gun in the 1990s.
Srebrenica: Two Videos and What They Prove
The first video was shown during Mladić’s trial: General Milenko Živanović reports to Kačavenda on “Operation Srebrenica,” bringing a smile to his face with the news that the mosque minaret was “flattened”. Kačavenda then congratulated the general and soldiers, speaking about a soon restoration of the Serbian state.
The video does not prove that Kačavenda knew about the plan for mass executions or that he participated in planning the crime. However, it shows his closeness with the military leadership, approval of the fall of Srebrenica, and a positive reaction to the news of the destruction of an Islamic religious site. According to available public sources, SOC has not issued a statement regarding this video.
The second video is more widely known: members of the “Scorpions”, a unit under the control of Serbia’s State Security, execute six captured civilians from Srebrenica near Trnovo, two of whom were minors. At the start of the video, Father Gavrilo, the head of the Privina Glava Monastery, blesses members of the unit with words that refer to Bosniaks as “Turks.” The Church did react to this video: in June 2005, the Holy Synod of Bishops condemned the cold-blooded murder of unarmed civilians, but without mentioning the Srebrenica genocide or any potential responsibility of the Church representatives.
After the War: No Repentance, Only Decorations
The behaviour from 1995 is not crucial for today’s message, but what followed is. Kačavenda retired in 2013, after having previously requested to step down for health reasons, at a time of publicly raised accusations of sexual harassment of a minor, which he denied. His retirement was not explained by his behaviour during the war.
Instead of distancing, decorations followed. This is where it is important to differentiate the Patriarchate from individual bishops and eparchies.
In 2015, Bishop Filaret awarded Vojislav Šešelj the Order of “The White Angel of the First Order,” as a “Chetnik Duke, conqueror of the Hague Tribunal.” In the same year, Metropolitan Amfilohije presented him with a second church award. A third, in 2022, was awarded by the Eparchy of New Gračanica and Mid-Western America, and Bishop Irinej of Bačka presented it on behalf of Bishop Login.
That same year, General Vladimir Lazarević, convicted in the Hague for aiding crimes against humanity against Kosovo Albanians, was decorated by the then Bishop Pahomije of Vranje. None of these decorations was the decision of the Synod, but none of them have been revoked either.
This continuity reaches the current patriarch. In 2024, with the blessing of Patriarch Porfirije, Vučić went to New York to lobby against the UN Resolution on the Srebrenica Genocide, and Porfirije himself used his Easter message to attack the Resolution and label those claiming that genocide was committed in Srebrenica as historical revisionists.
Resolution A/RES/78/282 unconditionally condemns every denial of genocide in Srebrenica and actions that glorify those convicted of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Branimir Đurović from the Youth Initiative for Human Rights concludes that practices of denial and revisionism continue today due to the role the SOC played in the wars of the 1990s.
What Porfirije Said Ahead of the Resolution
The patriarch’s stance on Srebrenica is not new. Ahead of the UN General Assembly vote in 2024, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Porfirije, stated in his Easter message, published on the Friday before Easter according to the Julian calendar, that the sponsors of the Srebrenica Genocide “are trying to declare the Serbian people as perpetrators of genocide,” and that “they ignore crimes committed against the Serbian people.”
Speaking about the suffering of the Serbs in the First and Second World Wars, he stated that “the truth of that suffering did not have to be confirmed by imposed amoral resolutions,” but was rather “witnessed by the suffering itself, without false witnesses in the form of direct descendants and indirect followers of the perpetrators of real genocide.”
“We strongly raise our voice and point to an absolute falsehood and an attempt at unprecedented historical revisionism, which attempts, through a simple inversion, to declare the Serbian people, a victim of multiple genocides and ethnic cleansing, as the perpetrators of genocide,” the message reads.
The patriarch added that “he is not undermining the extent of crimes in Srebrenica,” but that “as Orthodox Serbs we also do not remain silent before the crimes against Serbian people around Srebrenica.”
The Resolution, adopted on May 23, 2024, with 84 votes in favor, 19 against, and 68 abstentions, designates July 11 as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica. Neither the Serbian people nor collective responsibility is mentioned in its text.
What the Other Side Says
The objective analysis must also take into account arguments that complicate the picture.
First, there were moments of sobering at the Church, but they must be carefully read. As early as May 5, 1992, Bishop Atanasije publicly said that Serbs under such command were committing crimes, mentioning around 400 killed Muslims in Zvornik. However, the same Bishop five months later reduced those crimes to individual revenge before a foreign audience, later developing an open apology for war. His example demonstrates how the criticism within the SOC was left without consequences for the author and the Church, rather than testifying to the existence of an alternative current. A more serious exception is a joint appeal for reconciliation by all three religious communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992, which foreign analysts assessed as an unprecedented example, as well as the Synod’s condemnation of the murder of civilians in 2005, however limited it may have been.
Second, theological argument: the funeral service is an acknowledgment of merit, but a prayer for the soul of a baptized person, and according to the rules, the Church does not deny it even to the murderers. Porfirije invoked this argument himself. Had the speech remained focused on prayer, the argument would have been sufficient. He, however, went one step further and offered an interpretation of Mladić’s life in which he is a defender of people, and victims are nameless collateral of a “horrific war.” Canon does not require this.
Third, legal framework: no international court has established the criminal responsibility of the SOC as an institution. ICTY, however, according to Article 6 of its Statute, could only try natural persons, so the SOC as an institution could not even be charged before that tribunal. The absence of proceedings is not therefore proof of either responsibility or innocence.
The problem is that these caveats do not explain specific choices made this week. Canon does not require the funeral service to be officiated by the patriarch personally, does not require a sabre on the casket, and does not require the convicted genocide perpetrator to be presented in an official statement as a “Serbian soldier.” All of these are choices, not obligations.
Public statements by several high-ranking representatives of the SOC, opposition to accepting the judicially established classification of genocide, and church decorations awarded to some Hague convicts show a long-standing pattern in which national solidarity is often placed ahead of a clear confrontation with individual responsibility for war crimes. That pattern was not without exceptions, but Ratko Mladić’s funeral, the way in which it was organized, and the role of Patriarch Porfirije give it a new institutional weight.
Veljković summarized this in one formula: the SOC observes history through an ethnophyletist lens in which the Serbian side is the eternal victim ( as Porfirije spoke before the adoption of the resolution), thereby avoiding the role and responsibility of church figures in both wars, World War II and the 1990s. In this view, Mladić is not a perpetrator, but a fighter; and the funeral service officiated by the patriarch is not a misunderstanding, but consistency.
For the survivors in Srebrenica, the message is therefore clear, not because anyone uttered the word “genocide” or denied it, but because no one in the Church felt the need to explain anything to the victims or to empathize with them. After today’s funeral for the “Butcher of the Balkans,” for those who had doubts, everything is clear.
