Patriarch Porfirije Consecrates New Church in Pale Tomorrow

Serbian Patriarch Porfirije, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which is based in Belgrade and has jurisdiction over believers in Serbia as well, arrives in Pale today, Friday, September 25, where tomorrow morning he consecrates the newly built Cathedral of the Council of the Holy Archangel Gabriel at Studentski Trg, in the center of town. The church belongs to the same institution that counts the largest number of believers in Serbia, so the event in Pale is being followed there too, even though the ceremony itself takes place in Republika Srpska.

According to the schedule announced by the Information Service of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Porfirije will be welcomed in front of the church today at 5:30 p.m., followed by a doxology, a prayer of welcome. A cultural and artistic program follows from 7 p.m. Tomorrow, Saturday, September 26, the welcome ceremony in front of the church is set for 8:30 a.m., the act of consecration begins at 9 a.m., and the Holy Hierarchical Liturgy is celebrated immediately after.

The date of the consecration had already been known for some time. Metropolitan Hrizostom of Dabar-Bosnia informed believers of it a month before the ceremony, on August 29, during the liturgy marking the parish feast day of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God, which he celebrated in the Pale church dedicated to that holiday.

The Cathedral of the Council of the Holy Archangel Gabriel forms a single complex with the University Center in Pale and is intended above all for students of the Faculty of Economics, the Faculty of Philosophy and the Faculty of Law, as well as the Faculty of Physical Education, which together bring several thousand students to that part of town. Construction began in 2008, so tomorrow’s consecration arrives after 18 years of work. The initiative to build the church was launched during the Defensive Patriotic War by Metropolitan Nikolaj of Dabar-Bosnia, who judged that Pale, as a university, tourist and cultural center of Republika Srpska, would develop quickly once the war ended, that its population would double, and that the spiritual needs of the student population, which in the meantime spent years studying without a church of its own near the faculties, would grow.

For the Pale community itself, where the University Center brings together students from across Republika Srpska, the opening of the church means that the nearby faculties get their own place of worship on Studentski Trg for the first time, instead of believers having to attend other churches in town. The two day program, with the welcome, the doxology and the cultural and artistic segment this evening, and the consecration and liturgy tomorrow morning, rounds off an undertaking that began back in the war years, when the church in Pale existed only as an idea of Metropolitan Nikolaj. The announcement of Patriarch Porfirije’s arrival was made by the Information Service of the Serbian Orthodox Church.