Serbian Orthodox Church Patriarch Porfirije said on Tuesday that "remembrance and memory must be nurtured" in the relationship of Serbs and Croats to Jasenovac, but that for future's sake, resentment should be fought Christianly because, otherwise, the spiral of evil would not stop.

In his first interview since he was appointed the 46th Serbian Orthodox Church patriarch, Porfirije told the Serbian Radio-Television public broadcaster that “one should not be trapped in a culture of remembrance by any kind of vengefulness and hatred because that way we close ourselves again and the spiral of evil has no end”.

He said that everyone should do all they could to make place for reconciliation, but that he personally did not hold a recipe for that and would do anything that could be useful on that path, which, he says, is difficult to predict.

Patriarch Porfirije praised Pope Francis’s gesture to form a joint commission to shed light on the historical role of Zagreb Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac at the time of the WWII Independent State of Croatia (NDH) and the Ustasha crimes in Jasenovac.

As a member of that commission, Porfirije noted that the first phase had been completed and that the discussion would continue.

In that dialogue and with the help of historians from both Serbia and Croatia we tried to shed light, as much as possible, on different events from the life of Alojzije Stepinac, and those conversations contributed to our better understanding of each other, the patriarch said.

According to him, both sides have maintained their positions, and he is convinced that an easier path would be found to go further, “at least without setbacks and problems, which would benefit both peoples” — Serbs in Croatia and Croats in Serbia.

Commenting on the possibility that Pope Francis could visit Serbia and the Serbian Orthodox Church, the patriarch underscored that he would not consider such “particularly important and epochal events” related to the church on his own.

There were no initiatives from the Vatican or vice versa. Patriarch Irinej said that it would be useful, the patriarch said.

Patriarch Porfirije, who had been the metropolitan of Zagreb and Ljubljana since 2014, said that he was sorry to leave many people he had known in Croatia, including the Orthodox people with whom he had started to form a community.