Serbian cardinal pleads against country's exclusion

Cardinal Ladislav Nemet of Belgrade is urging Western governments not to let recent controversy over the funeral of convicted Bosnian Serb wartime leader Ratko Mladic derail Serbia's ties with Europe.

Mladic, dubbed "Butcher of Bosnia," received a funeral attended by state officials in the capital.

The cardinal, a Divine Word Missionary, spoke in the wake of the lavish public funeral of former Bosnian Serb leader General Mladic, who died Aug. 27 in a United Nations prison hospital in The Hague, Netherlands, five years after being given a life sentence by the International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity.

Advertisement

Nemet said around 12,500 people had turned out for the Sept. 7 Orthodox funeral in Belgrade, a city of 1.7 million, adding that he regretted the incident had been used by international media to portray Serbia "as a place where bad things happen."

"Everyone has a right to a decent funeral — and if you're styled by some as a national hero, it's hardly going to be left to some simple parish priest," said the cardinal, vice president of the Council of European Bishops' Conference, or CCEE.

Mladic, a former Yugoslav People's Army general, led Serb forces during a 1992-1995 war that left 100,000 dead across Bosnia-Herzegovina. His troops were responsible for the forced ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs and indiscriminate siege of Sarajevo, as well as a 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim male detainees at Srebrenica, Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.

Advertisement

Condemning the public honouring of Mladic, whose flag-draped coffin was flown to Belgrade aboard a government plane, the European Union's Commission president, Ursula Von Der Leyen, described the TV footage as "shocking" and expressed condolences for those affected by his crimes.

"The elements of official support and the presence of some senior Serbian officials at the funeral are deeply regrettable," the statement noted. "They demonstrate a failure to confront a dark chapter in Europe's recent history and contradict the values underpinning Serbia's path towards the European Union."

Zdravka Gvozdjar, mother of a nine-year-old boy killed by Mladic-led forces during the siege of Sarajevo, told Reuters that Mladic "deserved to be erased from memory for good, not to be ... promoted as a hero."

"He should be remembered only as a butcher," she said.

Advertisement

The Belgrade funeral for Mladic was led by Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Porfirije, who said the general's name would remain "deeply etched in the memory and prayers of the majority of our Serbian Orthodox people, who feel and nurture a deep sense of gratitude towards him."

Nemet said relations with Serbia's predominant Orthodox Church had improved significantly since the 2021 election of Patriarch Porfirije, who was 25 years younger than his predecessor and had a "very different perception of the world."

(Jonathan Luxmoore writes for OSV News from Oxford, England.)