Election of His Holiness Porfirije as new Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church

On 18 February 2021 the Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church, gathered in assembly in the Cathedral of Saint Sava in Belgrade, elected the new Patriarch of the Serbian Church, the Metropolitan of Zagabria and Ljubljana, Porfirije (Perić).

In a letter addressed to the new Patriarch, Cardinal Kurt Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, expressed his warmest congratulations in the hope of that “our cooperation, which had already been so fruitful with your venerable predecessors, may continue to grow and may strengthen our commitment to fostering relations between our Churches”. Cardinal Koch also expressed the aspiration that “we will be able to continue to work together in different fields of ecclesial and cultural life, in the awareness that the ultimate aim of dialogue is the fulfilment of the crucial aspiration of Jesus Christ, our Lord, that is, the full communion of all his disciples”.