Bishop Sava led the Orthodox Christmas Day service in the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Lord in Zagreb on Saturday, greeting the faithful with the traditional greeting "Christ is born!"

He read a pastoral letter from Patriarch Porfirije and all archbishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church, in which they called for the protection of “the family based on Christian values” and addressed their prayers to those affected by “the flames of war”, namely their “co-religionist brothers and sisters in Ukraine and Russia.”.

The consequences of the tragic fratricidal Russian-Ukrainian conflict, encouraged from the outside, are terrible, and the whole world is threatened by the flames of war like never before, the letter said.

It recalled “the terror” being perpetrated against the remaining unprotected Serbs in Kosovo, and said that “the universal human rights and freedoms, as enjoyed by the Albanians and all the people in the world”, should also apply to the Serbs in Kosovo.