In a special statement, the Serbian Patriarch Porfirije said that canceling EuroPride was the correct decision. He also pointed out that the Church respects the freedom of every human being, and is opposed to any form of violence, public ostracism and persecution of anyone.

The Patriarch Porfirije said that the announcement that EuroPride would be held in Belgrade caused a lot of debate, division, controversy and conflict not only in Serbia, but everywhere where the Serbian people live.

“This topic has been artificially imposed on us and is completely contrary to the value system of our people, and likewise to that of our brothers and sisters of other faiths and ethnicities whom we live alongside. The representatives of traditional churches and religious communities have said as much to me in person. For that reason I believe that it was right to cancel this event,” said the Patriarch Porfirije.

He also stated that “the teaching of the Church has been implanted in our souls as Orthodox Christians, already expressed in the first pages of the Bible, where it was written that God created man as two sexes, the male and the female, which means that marriage and family have been defined as a union of love between a man and a woman with their children, from the beginning of the world to today and until the end of the world”.

“We fully understand the fundamentally justified great concern of our people, who have felt that all of their fundamental values to which they have been loyal for centuries, in particular the holy relics of marriage and family, have been deeply and systemically threatened by the gross promotion and imposition of policies and ideologies which have the aim to topple the pillars upon which our identity has been built for centuries, to make everything ephemeral, relative and fluid,” said the Patriarch.

For those reasons, they have, as they say, presented the reasons why they believe that canceling EuroPride was necessary and justified in direct conversation with the highest representatives of the state.

“At the same time, I would like to remind that the Church of Christ respects the God-given freedom of each human being, and it is opposed to any form of violence, public ostracism and persecution of anyone. Evil is not cured and beaten through violence, it can only be spread that way,” emphasized the Patriarch.

“We pray to the Lord Christ with the prayers of Saint Sava of Serbia to relieve us of this, harmful and unnecessarily imposed on us, in this time when our fatherland and our people are faced with various trials and problems, concluded the Patriarch Porfirije in his statement.