Byzantine Blog

Today is the seven year anniversary of kidnapping and subsequent brutal murder of Serbian Orthodox monk, Father Hariton (Chariton) of the Holy Archangels Monastery near Prizren in Kosovo and Metohija, Serbia.

Fr. Hariton was kidnapped by the KLA Albanian extremists on June 15th 1999 in the streets of Prizren. His body was found one year later on August 8th 2000, in an unmarked grave in the cemetery of the Albanian village of Tusus near the city of Prizren. According to the post mortem report, Fr. Hariton's body was decapitated and severely mutilated. He was stabbed several times by knife. With his clothes the investigators have found Fr. Hariton's barely legible ID and the praying rope, by which his monastic brethren have identified him. The perpetrators of this murder have not yet been found.

A month later, on July 19 1999, Hieromonk Stefan Puric of the Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Budisavci near Klina in Kosovo and Metohija, was also abducted by the armed UCK (KLA) terrorists. According to the witnesses, father Stefan was violently tortured and subsequently murdered by Albanian terrorists. Fr. Stefan's body has never been found. By the information obtained from the Albanian side by Fr. David (Perovic), Fr. Stefan's mutilated body was thrown in an empty well and covered with animal carcasses.

Remembering the Kosovo New Martyrs, the Archimandrite of the Greek Orthodox Church from Boise, Idaho, Very Reverend Father Nektarios Serfes, wrote on this day:

Both men were simple monastic, gentle souls who wholeheartedly loved God and their Holy Orthodox Church. They paid the ultimate price of service to God, bearing witness to their Christian faith in the face of an enemy sworn to destroy the Church and to eradicate the entire history and legacy of Serbian Orthodox Christianity throughout the region.

We know that those who lose their lives for the love of Christ will quickly join the ranks of His saints and enter into everlasting life with Him in the eternal paradise. These new martyrs of our own time surely have received their crowns and have joined the ranks of the saints and martyrs from the all the centuries since the Church's founding. We should count ourselves blessed to have known such people whose faith was so strong and whose sacrifice was so great. In the end, their victory is also our own for their courage and their piety strengthens ours as we follow them in defending the Faith against the rising tide of antichristian sentiment in the modern world.

(...) Let us humbly remember to pray to the New Martyrs of Kosovo, Serbia: Monk Hariton and Hieromonk Stefan, and all the other Serbian Christians who have lost their lives during these last decades of war and persecution in the Balkans, as we pray to God to save what remains of the Serbian people and the Serbian nation, and to ease the ongoing suffering of innocent Christian men, women and children still struggling at this hour just to survive in Kosovo and Metohija.

Holy Serbian New Martyrs, pray for us!