The Orthodox faithful celebrated Easter at the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Lord in Zagreb on Sunday with a service said by the Bishop of Marcha Sava, vicar of Serbian Orthodox Church Patriarch Porfirije.

Wishing the numerous faithful who gathered a happy Easter with the traditional message “Christ is risen,” Sava read Porfirije’s Easter message.

In his message, the patriarch says that “we pray for peace in Ukraine, for an end to the suffering and conflict between brothers of the same faith and of the same blood, so that enmity and hatred will be replaced by friendship and love.”

Porfirije also says that the “hierarchs and faithful people of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which was first named the Patriarchate of Peć, are firmly and unchangingly of the opinion that the alienation of Kosovo and Metohija from the state of Serbia, directly or indirectly, de facto or de iure, is unacceptable.”

“We pray to the Savior and advocate for a common life, in mutual respect and understanding with the Albanians of Kosovo and Metohija, because if there is room in our souls for both, there will be room for everyone in Kosovo and Metohija,” he adds.

Porfirije also calls for “the progress of society, and above all national education and culture, be built on the foundations of the Gospel, on which they were created. We especially call for the preservation of the Serbian language and the Cyrillic alphabet, on which the Serbian culture was built.”

“We appeal to standardise the use of the Cyrillic alphabet in public space, as well as to stop the violence against the Serbian language and to abolish the provisions of the laws which impose that violence, especially the unconstitutional law that imposes so-called gender-sensitive language, behind which is hidden the fight against marriage and the family as established by God’s sacred and natural forms of human personal and common life,” the Serbian patriarch says.