SANCTUARIES OF SERBIA

Our trip passed over rock roads. The trip wasn't without temptations: The first car, that we rent, was almost immedi-ately broke, and it happened at the Bosnian Moslems territory. We must say, that Bosnian Moslems are Serbs nationality, who's ancestors at the period of Turkish supremacy for the some profits or afraid of deaf deny Christ.

In 1991-1995, here in Bosnia was a war. It was cruel and difficult: orthodox Christian fought against united forces of Moslems and Horvath Catholics. The situation looks like calm now, but when we stopped to repair the motor, our Serbian friends asked us don't go farther from the car, because Mos-lems worked not far from us in the forest. Our friends said to us, that we are not in big danger, but unfortunately, all things are possible.

We must say, that mass media demonstrate very preconceive the modern situation between orthodox Christian and Moslems. For example, there are two big reports about sufferings of Moslems refugees and burials of Moslems solders, which was killed in war 1991-1995 in 10 minutes telecast. And the re-port says, that the truth is not reconstruct yet, and that means, that the peace is impossible. That means that the con-flict exist until now. At the end of the telecast is the short report about the car with newly wedded Serbian couple, killed this day by the Moslems in Sarajevo. Our Serbian friend con-firmed: they always give the information so as if just Moslems are injured, but orthodox Serbs do not have any reason to com-plain. The family of Georgij, that we visited, as the most part of the other Serbian families, experienced a lot of trou-ble in the resent war. They had to live their native place. The "Red Cross" paid for the house, where they live now and not far from it is already foreign Moslems territory.

The situation is difficult not just with Moslems, but also with Catholics, of Horvath nationality. The conflict continues already long. Just in World War II, a lot of brutality took place. We visited the place of concentration camp "Jasenovaz", where about 700 thousand of Serbs were killed (in different camps were killed 1,5 million of Serbs, that is a huge loss for such a small nation). Not far from this concentration camp is a terrible place that is called "the cemetery of the brains". During the World War II at this place, Horvath col-lected 360 families. They brought them in the church and, with the help of special hammer crashed people's heads, and put the brains of killed people separate. Moreover, they threw away the bodies of the killed people. In addition, the blood flowed over the threshold of this church. This murder was called "bloody marriage". Not less terrible things are known. There are evidences that catholic bishops blessed such a vicious mockery. And even one of them thought out the special reward for those Catholics, who will device the best tortures for or-thodox Christians. Unfortunately, it is the truth. We passed the "poplar of the horror". Not far from it were executed and hung up on it a huge amount of people. Moreover, the small children were taken by the legs and their heads were broken at this poplar. The fate of this tree is the sign of the God's anger. In 70th years, it rots from within and fell. And now it lie on the special iron supports, in the memory of the mis-deeds that took place there.

It is known, that catholic bishops served divine services and blessed Horvath Catholics not just to fight with warriors, but to be at war with peaceful villages. They came to the vil-lage, gathered people as if to serve divine service, sprinkled them with water as if to rebaptize them and set on fire imme-diately. The sense of this sprinkling is in the terrible hy-pocrisy: it was considered, that this people died as Catho-lics. Under the floor of one of this churches that we visited with the lord Chrisostom, were buried several hundred of Serbs, that were thrown in the gorge together with the priests of this village.

So, the rots of the modern conflict between Serbs and Horvath went deep and even though the situation is pretty easy now, nevertheless, NATO always provoke the development of in-ternational and interreligious enmity. During the war 1991-1995, when Serbs were successful in their war actions, the USA just bombed peaceful cities and by the way, bombs had jeering inscription "Happy Easter".

One of the holy things, which we visited in Bania-Luku, is the relicts of the holy martyr Platon, who was beatify by Ser-bian Church. Archbishop Platon was killed by the ustoshi, Catholics fanatics, who fought on the part of Nazis at the World War II. In 1942 archbishop was cut and sank in the river. Then his body was found. His incorruptible relicts are in one of the churches of Bana-Luku.

Further, our way was over Bosnia and Herzegovina to the holy things of Chernogoria. We found out that in ancient Ser-bia took place the preaching of apostles. Here were apostles Paulus and Petrus. But we will tell you about it in our fur-ther publications.

Regular priests Kirill and Mefodij (ZINKOVSKIE)