Interview of the Day
Saturday, February 26, 2000

Metropolitan of Montenegro Bishop Amfilohije Radovic, Metropolitan of Montenegro

You’re a defender of the attitude that the Church should be actively involved in politics in critical times for the nation. Are you satisfied with the behaviour of the clerics at this moment, given that this is a critical time for the nation?

There are many people within the Church who work according to their abilities, they try to be responsible to themselves, to their consciences, to the Church and to the people. Whether we’re satisfied with this or not isn’t so important; the important thing is whether God will be satisfied with what we’re doing and the way we’re doing it. If we look back these ten years, ten crucial years in the life of the Church and the people, the Church has been committed to the maximum in all these events, trying not to be involved in political or party quarrels and competition while at the same time trying to confirm its attitude before the world and before God, as well as responding to the challenges of the time. Our Holy Archpriest Church Assembly did the very same thing during the 1990s, from the election of His Holiness Patriarch Pavle and the Holy Synod did it more or less successfully as our bishops attempted to assist in making decisions about the accumulated problems and in helping finding the path of common sense and sanity, in finding a way out of these troubled and confused times that we are in and we - I wanted to avoid these words - but we were thrown into these times with everything which happened on the international and domestic fields.

It seems, however, that this is where the problem begins, perhaps because the times are troubled, as you say, and everybody interprets the essential interests of the people differently and thus acts completely differently. I have the impression that difference in the interpretation of the interests of the people exist within the Church itself.

All of that depends on the people: how much they realise what their vital interests are and what are subordinate or passing interests, but when we are talking about the Church we have the Holy Assembly and Synod and they haven’t abdicated their duty as happened in the 1940s, during the time of Patriarch Gavrilo, on March 27 it was, and let’s go further into the past, in 1914, at the beginning of World War One and in 1918, when the new state was established, and in 1937, when the state and the Church were in conflict over the question of the concord, just to give some examples from the twentieth century. It’s possible that there were some errors during the period from the 1950s to the 1990s, given the conditions under which the Church lived. The Church was under a totalitarian system, our very existence was endangered, our lip were sealed and we couldn’t speak, at least in public, our real words.

Having mentioned this gagging of the Church in the period between 1950 and 1990, or the 1990s, I have to ask you whether you consider that an error of the Church itself. A lot of people have described it as the period when we killed God within ourselves, and there is a very popular anecdote which illustrates this. Whether or not it is true it is very illustrative. It’s about Patriarch Pavle, and it happened in a village during the 1990s when a farmer met him and said "Comrade Pavle, you’re the first German who has visited our village".

I should say that He was not killed but rather was hidden, that He was concealed. When I say this I’m talking, firstly, about Montenegro, about the diocese of the Metropolitan of Montenegro and the coastal region. Anyone who came to or travelled through Montenegro between the 1950s and the 1990s got the impression that God indeed had been killed there, that He had disappeared, that He would never return there. Of course very few people know what this diocese went through. I have to admit that I myself, although I was born there, was not sufficiently aware of how the Church had suffered from 1945 until now. Just to give an example - 115 of the finest priests were killed, 104 of them by the Communists, with Metropolitan Jankije at the head of the priests. Then Metropolitan Arsenije was arrested in 1954 and spent eleven years in prison, other priests were arrested too, such as Luka Vukas who would not betray his Metropolitan either, because he would not be involved in the false accusations against him, not to mention the terrible pressure of the Communist Party which actually assumed the role of pseudo-church, pseudo-religion. The Party was killing with religious fanaticism in the worst meaning of the word. To give you just one example: during the 1980s I met a country woman in my village and she asked "When will you come to us?" I replied "I have no business there, you don’t believe in God, you don’t respect priests and I can’t live without God and, as you can see, I am a priest." She turned around then, we were alone somewhere in Cioci, across from the Moraca Monastery and she said "Don’t speak like that, my friend, you know that we are the closest family friends of the Rakocevici," and really her family were my family’s, the Radovici’s closest friends. "And I do say my prayers to God and I know where I will say my prayers and I won’t say them in front of this dog’s mess. I won’t give them the opportunity to make fun of me and my God," and she began to week, "and if I don’t have God, my friend, I shall vanish without trace". I was so touched by the depth of this woman’s faith. She certainly hadn’t been inside the church since the 1950s and her behaviour indicated that she had lost all connection with God. There are thousands of people like her and it’s obvious, now that it’s possible to show our religious feelings, who have returned to the Church. If you could only see the tens of thousands of people at the Christmas Eve service in Montenegro, the people who have spiritually opened their eyes, who have matured morally, regenerated themselves and, once all areas of human life and society have been regenerated the Church will no longer have any need to involve itself in political problems because the politicians would, as mature and responsible people, spiritually and morally adult, they would be able to do their job with dignity and it is not always possible to say that for the political hierarchy, it doesn’t matter of what persuasion they are of because they have all grown from the same cradle and thus are not able to understand each other and to find the right way and the solutions for these vital problems which are so crucial for all of us and for this region.

During the 1990s when, as you said, the lips of the Church were unsealed, the time of the rise of Slobodan Milosevic to power, you said you thought he was the man who could recognise the essential interests of the nation. Before long, however, at the time the Drina River blockade was put in place, you were saying that "the hand which builds a wall between itself and its brother in distress is cursed". Now you often speak of the government’s politics of killing. Were you mistaken then? Or are you perhaps mistaken now?

RADOVIC: It was a time when we all hoped that the time of new men had come. But as time passed we saw that we were more or less dealing with the same kind of people. They had changed the name of their parties, changed their image, but actually they had remained the prisoners of one ideological consciousness, a party consciousness which is more important than anything else. I do not exclude from this the gentleman, the comrade, you mentioned, who played and took the throne on the basis of people’s suffering, especially in Kosovo and Metohija, but the traditional saying "Don’t believe a man without faith," was eventually proven to be true.

But when an educated and religious man such as yourself believes is he naive? Or is it his error?

As far as I can recall, and it was a long time ago, I don’t recall the sentence, there were so many pathetic things said. To hope, we hope - yes, but not for a single moment, even then, I did not say it. First of all, I do know the old one, the ancient and true statement from the Bible that a cursed man will be a mean man forever, it doesn’t matter whether it is I or anybody else. Thus it is in God we trust and the closer to God man is and the more faithful to God, the more certain it is that he will be prepared to sacrifice his idols and, if you like, to do anything else for the sake of those things which are everlasting and eternal in his relationship with God and the nation.

Was it catastrophic for Serbs to believe they had a historic opportunity to restore and unite all the Serbian countries? Even you shared this conviction. A lot of people called it Greater Serbia and it was one of the reasons for the disintegration of the state. what do you think today when Serbs are broken up more than ever, and not only in a territorial sense?

There is a saying that the last mind doesn’t serve the first; this is one thing and, secondly, I do believe, even today, and this is something which is common to every person of any nation in the world and it is something which is guaranteed by all international charters and UN charters, that every nation has the right to its own space, to its survival, to its place in the sun so, among these nations, that which belongs to other nations naturally does belong to the Serbian nation. And it was legitimate, at one moment, when the Slovenians, according to the national key, were getting their own state, the Croats were getting their own state, the Macedonians were getting their own state for the first time in history, it was legitimate for Serbs to want their own state. This nation had been divided, not by its own error, but by an error of AVNOJ [the National Antifascist Liberation Council of Yugoslavia] and one revolutionary group which didn’t consult anybody established administrative borders which dissected the live organism of the Serb nation. It was then legitimate for that nation to say, well all right, help yourself, you’ll get your own states, but we also have a right to our place in the sun. But time has shown that administrative borders are self-perpetuating. Without going into the whole problem, historic, geographic, political and social, those borders became recognised as the borders between states, the UN charter was not respected, the charter which deals with the right to self-determination, the right of the Serbian nation, especially in regions where this nation, where Serbs were slaughtered alive and remained unslaughtered in 1914 and especially in 1941, this nation, instinctively, primally, in the interest of survival simply began, let me put it like this, a fight for its survival. We know about this and the results are the results we know but, without going into this problem and the state of the Serbian people at the end of the twentieth century it’s difficult to understand everything that’s happened with this and the other nations in the region.

Others say that the was the Serbian nation went about protecting its essential interests were obviously wrong. Do you think these methods were wrong?

A good deed done the wrong way stops being good and on some historic measure it is certain that everything we have done, as individuals and as a nation, at the end of the twentieth century, everything will be weighed in the scales of God’s justice and it is certain that everything which has been done and the was it has been done, will not meet the test of history but many things which have been done, the very things which at this moment may seem to be wrong will might turn out to be right. Time will tell. it’s possible that the Serbs, because the Serbs are a Christian nation, are the new Israel and it’s necessary for us to cross the desert of Egypt and reach the zero point of our existence before we sober up and get rid of all the golden calves we have bowed to and regenerate ourselves and regenerate our maturity and become a chosen, mature nation of God. So the things which are happening to us at this moment are our responsibility, ours as a nation; we have contributed to this no-exit situation and both God and history expect us to find an exit from this position. I’m sure that this nation has the strength for that but it’s obvious that we need new people, new brains.

People think that the highest officials of the Church are actually politically divided, that some are standing by the regime while others go to opposition meetings.

We are also men of flesh and blood, we share the weaknesses of the people and their virtues and so it is no wonder that there people in the Church take different positions, but I believe in those things which are essential, immutable in the Church: the Assembly is most important, its mind, its collective knowledge while everything any individual says is his own responsibility, his own responsibility to God. Nobody can take responsibility for me as metropolitan of Montenegro, as a Christian I am the one who must take that responsibility, the responsibility for the things I do as metropolitan, I am the one responsible for that. The Assembly cannot take responsibility for me and it’s not possible that one day I shall say that this is the principle of collective responsibility, as it was under the various totalitarian systems, that I was given orders and carried out my task. No, nobody can abnegate his own responsibility. Above all I am responsible to God through my conscience, not only me but everybody else as well.

Does this confuse the people and the faithful?

I’m sure it does confuse them, but the people expect everyone in the Church to repeat identical things with one hear and soul. However this doesn’t happen with the people, either. It’s possible that one characteristic of the Orthodox nations, which are different from the nations of the Western provenance based on the Roman idea, as Dostoyevski used to say, and here it doesn’t matter whether we’re dealing with Protestants or Roman Catholics. I think about and observe the behaviour of people in the West, how this behaviour is manifest through the mass media, through the public appearances, not only of statesmen during the bombing of Serbia and Montenegro. It’s amazing what a level of unity has been reached, that an excuse has been found for this crime against humanity, this crime according to the UN, not to mention the crime against hundreds of innocent victims, a crime of destroyed dignity and destroyed property. I was in Novi Sad a couple of days ago and saw those bridges standing gaping there, it is amazing to find an excuse for this or here in Belgrade to pass through Knez Mihajlova Street and see, in the heart of Belgrade, a city which was bombed in 1941 and 1944 and bombed again this year. The only excuse for it can be what a Spanish general said to me at the Pec Patriarchal when we were talking frankly and he said to me, "You know, there is an old maxim that the aim justifies the means". I answered "If that is so, then it could be". It can’t be here, among us, that it is the fault of this nation and the fault of this Church, if you like, looking at it historically, but eschatologically, metahistorically, with deeper observations. It’s a virtue of the Church not to teach nobody to be like an ox in a herd but to teach them that they are Christians, that they belong to the Christian fold, but it is a fold endowed with intelligence, with common sense and to teach that because of that intelligence they must be aware that they have personal responsibility before God and before the people at every moment for everything they say and do.

There was some kind of, let’s say, united attitude, but later a number of people wanted to interpret that in their own way and to take it just for themselves. We have heard today at the Socialist Congress Mr Milosevic speaking about different people from criminals to janissaries. Where do such divisions lead? Do you think he is right?

To be honest, listening to that speech, I was asking myself whether we seeing a man who lives in some other world or a schizophrenic genius. This was my impression, may Mr Milosevic and everyone else forgive me, but I am simply astounded at the lack of reality, the lack of feeling or any recognition of the tragedy of the moment. This was obviously an invitation for confrontation. I had the same feeling in 1997 during the student protest when a crowd of people was brought into Belgrade from the rest of Serbia to confront there own people: there was tragedy in the air.

You mention the demonstrations of 1996 and 1997 and say that you are reminded of them by this present period. A lot of people have remarked on what they say is an excellent photograph - in the artistic sense of course - of you with a whistle from that time. Does this mean that you had chosen a side? And will you now, if it comes to that, that we have to take sides? And which side will you take?

I took the side of the people then. I was among the people. I will do the same again today: there, where the people are, is the future. I belong there and I will choose that side even today.

But the government says that the people are with them.

Well, you know, every government says the same thing and everything it does is done in the name of the people. It was the same thing when the government did everything in the name of the people in 1941. Hitler did everything in the name of the people. Lenin and Stalin sent millions of people into the gulags in the name of the people and in the name of a new man and the future. So it’s not really in the name of the people because they say that they do everything in the name of the people.

But you said that the Church, in your opinion, had made a contribution to democratic changes: among other things in that context you mentioned the Synod’s request for current government to withdraw. However shortly after that Patriarch Pavle appeared at one of Mr Milosevic’s receptions and this caused great confusion I think and tempestuous reactions from the people and within the church itself.

Above everything, and it can be seen in him and in the attitude of the Assembly, the patriarch is trying to prevent the blood of the people being shed, that’s his constant concern; secondly he is a man who carries the unity of Serbia and Montenegro in his heart, he went to that genuinely thinking that it was some sort of celebration of the uniting of Serbia and Montenegro, but it was known that that union, if we look more deeply into history, we know that this union was formed on November 26, 1918 and not on November 29, which is the founding date of a state which no longer exists. This was an obvious confusion which caused doubt among people, but our patriarch is not the Roman pope, he is not infallible and can make mistakes, this is natural. However that doesn’t mean that his is the basic position of the Church. He knows that there are many reasons there must be changes among the people who lead this nation in order to find a way out of this impasse we are in.

Was the patriarch manipulated on that occasion?

You should ask him that question. That is a question that should be addressed only to him.

I would like to hear his reaction from him but you must be aware of it yourself, after all you discussed this rather odd gesture within the Church. There was the open letter from Bishop Artemije who expressed the opinion of those people who considered that the patriarch had been humiliated, particularly by the greeting of Mrs Markovic.

As far as I know it was perhaps not advisable of Bishop Artemije to release this letter to the public, normally a bishop would always seek the opinion of the Synod and the Assembly before acting and is always prepared to accept other thoughts and opinions and to respect the attitude of the Church Assembly.

Is it true that when President Milosevic sought an audience with the patriarch that the patriarch advised him to withdraw from the position of president and that he became angry and answered angrily "And who will replace me"? Is that true?

I don’t know. This is the first time I have heard that.

They were saying in the newspapers that this was your position as well, that you had said the same thing.

No, I have never expressed such a position. The only thing I know is that the patriarch visited President Milutinovic and said this to him personally. I was with His Holiness last autumn and I know that that letter was sent and was never answered.

So there’s never been a reply?

No. There’s never been a reply.

And how did Mr Milutinovic react.

Well Mr Milutinovic’s reaction was that he thought that the world would change and that the world would realise that he was right.

That who was right?

Well, Milutinovic and the people who were and are with him. But the world didn’t realise or understand anything.

When Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic were accused of war crimes, you said that, according to the same criterion even Saint Petar of Cetinje should go to The Hague. Did you have the same feeling when Milosevic and other Yugoslav officials were accused of war crimes.

I was in The Hague and visited a number of our unfortunates who are faced with that accusation. Personally I don’t believe that the Hague Tribunal and the way it was established and those who established it articulate the language of true justice. If this tribunal were a real tribunal the tribunal itself should appear together with Milosevic. Milosevic will go there, that’s certain, and with him will go all the other participants in this tragedy which has been happening to us for the past nine years in this region, with no exemption for Albright’s pet Thaqi from Kosovo. At the same time Mr Clinton should appear before the tribunal with the very same arguments as Milosevic. To mention some other people - Blair, Joschka Fischer and many others like them. Then it will be a real tribunal, a true one which gives satisfaction to the justice of God and man.

Does this mean that you believe that the Serbs did commit crimes, that’s to say that someone committed crimes in the name of the Serbs? As far as I understood you believe that others committed those crimes. I’m asking you this question because you once said that Jasenovac was a tragedy for the Serbian nation but an even greater tragedy for the Croat nation. In that sense do we have to repent for some our sins in order to have better times or at least to admit that somebody committed crimes in our name and repent for that?

This should certainly be put to the test in the tribunal of God and our consciences but the first to test is will be our own people and the ones responsible, testing everything which has been done in the name of the people during the past ten years and not only during these ten years: we’ll go further into the past, even to 1941. This is the reason I’m saying that those who have recently bombed us, the same who threw bombs on the territory of the Republic of Srpska in 1995. At that time, whether or not he received it and the ambassador of the day said that he did, I wrote to Clinton and I stand behind it to today. Mr Clinton was spending his vacation in Hawaii and I wished him a pleasant time and at the same time he was finishing with the last members of a slaughtered nation. I know families on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina where 25 members of a family were slaughtered and only one remained alive by a miracle, his family was destroyed by this accursed bombing in 1995, not to mention the bombing, merciless, inhuman and antihuman, which happened in our country from March 24 last year and on March 24 this year there will be a requiem for all those killed by this inhuman bombing of NATO.

Will there be Serbs in Kosovo when all these injustices have been redressed?

There will be Serbs, there will be Serbs in Kosovo, if God grant, until the end of Kosovo. As Bishop Nikolaj says, the harvest is here on earth but the granary is in heaven. And Kosovo cannot be taken from this nation in an eternal plan, not in the sense of private property but in the sense of the fact that this nation has become God’s nation, a mature nation precisely in the area of the Pec Patriarchy, through the nation’s martyrs, saints, temples, all the Jugovic mothers and the Kosovo oath. I am sure that this darkness and senselessness which we are all in, even the Albanians who are an honourable nation who must have their place in the sun, I am sure that this wilderness must be gone one day, that it will be possible to live together as we lived the past five hundred years under the Ottoman Empire and we survived together because the things which have been happening in Kosovo and Metohija under the protection of Kosovo King Kouchner and his servants are not good for the Albanians, in the first place, and are not good for the Serbs either, they’re no good for anybody. I’m sure that the time will come when all this is overcome, that we’ll come out of this impasse and that the Albanians and Serbs will live together in Kosovo as they did for the centuries past and I pray to God that it will be so.

You have said that the Church and the people in the Church never wanted to imposed themselves as leaders but that they tried, through their statements and attitudes, to show the people how to find leaders among themselves. Now you appear to be contradicting this, at least with the public appearance of Bishop Artemije who, in some way, has placed himself at the head of the Serbs, or at least those Serbs remaining in Kosovo. Someone has referred to him as the Serbian Makarios, and I’m interested in whether such a statement is appropriate and also in how you see Bishop Artemije’s role today.

You know, I’ve told Bishop Artemije several times and I’ll repeat it here. "My dear Bishop, I could have believed that my Artemije was able to do anything, but not even in my dreams could I have believed that my Artemije would become a politician."

And what did he say?

He smiled, like a child, I would say. I suppose he was aware of the truth of my words. I want to say what I said to Artemije, when Artemije, as a man who was completely apolitical, a hermit from Crna Reka, has been forced to take the role of a national leader then we must understand the position of his people, his congregation. Bishop Artemije has found himself in the same position as Arsenije III Carnojevic at the end of the seventeenth century or Arsenije IV Sakabenta or Saint Petar of Cetinje during the time the metropolitans of Montenegro had to lead the people, but they left them alone and it was natural that he had to go with them and then to give them one of their medals or simply to stay with his own people, to share the destiny of his people and take responsibility for saving what could not be saved, and thank God that Bishop Artemije did not do so. If the Serbian patriarch had not visited Kosovo and Metohije so many times during last summer, along with the other bishops, I can guarantee that after the moment of madness which occurred in Kosovo and Metohija from June last year there would not have been a stone of the Pec Patriarchy or Gracanica or Decani left, not to mention that there would not be a single Serb left in Kosovo and Metohija. Bishop Artemije judged in one moment that, as a real Christian, he had no other choice and that he was right to expect a healthy change in the country of Serbia so that Serbia and her statesmen could take responsibility for the destiny of the people. And he is attempting, to the extent that God gives him strength, to keep at least these seeds, the last remaining seed, to prepare and make it possible for the officials of Serbia to solve the problems of Kosovo in the future and he does it by his presence there because if he had left Kosovo with those who had the destiny of the people in their hands they would have nothing to do in Kosovo, they could sit by themselves with their medals and their mutual congratulations and Kosovo would disappear without trace.

Montenegro’s problems are not insignificant either. In the meantime the Orthodox Church of Montenegro has been legally registered. The Socialist Party of Serbia and even you yourself reacted angrily to this and many people saw it as a step on the way to the secession of Montenegro. Do you see it that way?

One of the fruits of the wasteland of the soul and morality and a fruit of the ignorance which kills us in relation to the Church is the appearance of the tribal and party sect which certain political circles, for political not Church purposes, has been declared to be the Orthodox Church of Montenegro. There was no single party regulation respected in the establishment of the Orthodox Church of Montenegro, which is popularly known as the Travelling Circus of Montenegro.

It seems that the current Montenegrin government was very keen to show the people that they were on very good terms with the Church, even with you. Then on Christmas Eve there was a reaction by the police, which many people saw as an overreaction and soon after that the Montenegrin Church was registered and President Djukanovic changed his mind and said he would respect both Churches. What do you think about this?

You know, there is a coalition ruling in Montenegro now and among that coalition is the Social Democrats, a small party in Montenegro, I don’t know whether they have even one per cent of the votes, but they tip the balance on the Montenegrin scales, and this party, on threat of non-survival of the coalition, says "You must do this and this!". It’s obvious that Mr Djukanovic, in order to keep this coalition together, in other words to keep the power and keep himself in government, came after the registration and said he would congratulate Metropolitan Mihajlo, a person who does not exist. So this, I feel, is a statement of a political nature which I am sure does not essentially bind Djukanovic because, as far as I know him, he is not the kind of insensitive and intemperate man who cannot discriminate, although he is without religious education: he admits himself that he doesn’t understand Church issues, but he’s sober enough to tell the difference between a horn and a candle. However I have to confess that I can’t justify this on any grounds of political expediency, there are some things you can’t play games with and the Church is one of the things you can’t play games with. The state of Montenegro has existed and has not existed. God grant that the state of Montenegro will exist forever, although it may happen that there will be no Montenegro since, the way things are going today all states will become one planetary state with Clinton as the leader and everybody else will have to obey his principle, not only the principle of limited sovereignty which was Brezhnev’s idea, but principles which have gone even further. But the Church was here and will stay here: it’s eight hundred years old and it is the backbone of Montenegro and nobody can play games with it, nobody can play with us as a banknote for bargains game. That’s what the politicians who have evolved from the former Communist Party want.

You have been accused of dividing the people of Montenegro according to religion, you were accused of not recognising the nation of Montenegro and you answered, as far as I remember, that if the people of Montenegro had chosen an independent Montenegro you would have been the first to support it. Do you think that day is far away?

The matter of supporting, support is one thing and accepting is another thing. Personally, as a man and a citizens, I don’t think there is a single crucial reason to separate Montenegro from Serbia. I have said that more than once and I say it today. But, as a citizen, I have the right to only one vote, this vote has weight, given my position, but if that happens this year, only if the people may vote decently and fairly, without manipulations, because the very same people voted for a common existence with Serbia eight years ago, whether the people can change in eight years or what these changes are, what deep reasons have emerged, new ones, to change the feelings of the people, I don’t know, but it’s possible, even stone and water can change so why could the people not change, so - if the people want it - it’s fine. But the Church has its own rules which are centuries old and there is nothing which can change it, whether Serbia and Montenegro are together or not; things have been the same for centuries and as it was the desire of all the best men of Serbia and Montenegro during all these centuries it is important for the people to live together in brotherly love and harmony. If all Europe is uniting now it’s senseless to make a confrontation among those who are one heart, one soul and have been throughout all these centuries.

When you were reminded that it was you who permitted Arkan and his armed men to enter the Cetinje Monastery on St Peter’s Day, you answered with two questions: the first was "Who ever saw a Montenegrin come to Cetinje unarmed?" and the second was "Who could possible disarm a Montenegrin?" If sense does not prevail and this conflict is not resolved in some normal agreement, do you think that things could be solved with arms and do you think that then the Church will be able to disarm the people?

God forbid that brother raise arms against brother. We have had enough fratricidal wars and blood feuds in the past and there has been enough bloody ideological revenge, in 1941, for example, then 1948 and so on, that’s all we know about. I trust in God that nobody sensible in Serbia and Montenegro will use that way to solve the problems which exist.

The times are obviously great. But are the people still small?

Well, if we fear that they are small in comparison to the times we live in, God grant that these great times and great temptations we have been passing through will help us to mature and become just a little bigger than we are now.

Is there any cause for hope?

Hope never disappears: it is a flower which blooms eternally in the human heart. I believe that from this time we live in, the evil, troubled and difficult time we live in, that from this time will be born something which will be more worthy of us as individuals and as a nation, something which will regenerate our honour in the eyes of the world along with so many things we should ask ourselves and to repent for everything we have done and have not done in this time. However the nation, when you look more deeply, has kept its honour in the eyes of God and the world and time is a master sieve, time will show it.

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