Homily of His Holiness Serbian Patriarch kyr Porfirije, delivered on 4 August 2026 in Mrkonjić Grad, on the occasion of the Day of Remembrance of the Serbians Who Suffered and Were Expelled During Operation “Storm”
 
Your Grace, dear brother Bishop Sergije, host of this God-preserved Diocese; brethren Hierarchs; esteemed President of the Republic of Serbia; esteemed President of the Republic of Srpska; esteemed Member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina; Presidents of the National Assemblies of the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Srpska; esteemed President Mr. Dodik; dear Mr. Knežević; beloved spiritual children, children of Saint Sava, noble people of Krajina – may God help you all!
 
Year after year we gather in different places to offer prayerful remembrance for those who innocently suffered in the terrible expulsion of our people from their centuries-old hearths, known as Operation “Storm”, and to embrace all those who, even today, continue to bear the wound of that unprecedented exile on European soil in the twentieth century.
 
This evening, here in Mrkonjić Grad, I shall not seek new words beyond those we have spoken before, for the truth remains unchanged, the pain does not diminish with the passage of time, and our duty before God to remember our martyred kinsmen remains enduring and unalterable.
 
Here, in Mrkonjić Grad, itself marked by profound wounds of suffering, we have been gathered this evening by our love for our martyrs, our relatives, neighbours, and compatriots who, during the dreadful expulsion from their centuries-old homes in Dalmatia, Lika, Kordun, and Banija in August 1995, innocently lost their lives. With particular sorrow we remember those who perished on the Petrovačka cesta, where innocent men, women, children, and the elderly were killed while travelling in refugee columns on the road to safety.
 
In their suffering, and in the steadfastness of all who bore the cross of exile, the words of the Holy Apostle Paul were fulfilled: “We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8–9). Even when they were deprived of their homes and native land, our exiled brothers and sisters carried within themselves the faith that the Lord had not abandoned them and the hope that evil would not have the final word. We prayerfully remember them all this evening, beseeching Christ our God, who Himself suffered upon the Cross yet by His death conquered death, to grant them rest and life eternal. We likewise remember all those who, thirty-one years ago, left their ancestral homes and, in endless columns, set out toward the Republic of Srpska and Serbia, carrying in their hands only the bare necessities, while bearing in their hearts their homes, their native land, their holy shrines, and the graves of their forefathers.
 
We have assembled here out of the desire to remember in prayer the innocent victims and sufferers of our own people, for prayer is the deepest and most worthy form of remembrance. Before the face of God, prayer lifts up not only the pain of the victim but also the wound of the one who remembers. It preserves the truth while freeing the human heart from the hatred that binds a person ever anew to evil.
 
These sufferings, together with the remembrance of all the bitter episodes of our long-suffering history, should, as a baptized people, once again return us to what we have always been, restore us to our roots, turn us toward God, and direct us toward one another as brothers and sisters, as a community, as one united people. They should lead us to a true and deeper understanding of Christ's words: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39), and indeed beyond even this: “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44).
 
This evening as well, we call to mind the commandment of love and inscribe it upon our hearts. At the same time, we know how difficult it is for man to love one who opposes him or regards him as an enemy. Only those who have become fully conformed to Christ, the saints of God, attain the fullness of such love. Yet Christ's commandment shows the way to each one of us and calls us to the unceasing spiritual struggle of cleansing our hearts of selfishness and self-sufficiency, so that joy, love, and peace may abound ever more richly within us.
 
For this reason, I feel both the duty and the responsibility, at this very moment – as always from the Throne of Saint Sava – to call upon all of us, his spiritual descendants, not to allow hatred to overwhelm us in place of love for our neighbor; not to permit what is, regrettably, so often taking place among us today to become accepted as normal: that one's neighbor should become a stranger, that a brother should become an adversary, and that difference should become a pretext for hostility. In other words, we must not allow hatred towards our neighbor – that is, hatred among ourselves – to become the only acceptable way of life.
 
The divine commandment of love has a very concrete meaning. It directs us first to those with whom we share our daily lives. We owe love to one another first of all within the family and in marriage: spouses owe love to one another; we owe love to our parents and our children, to our brothers and sisters; then to our neighbors, our colleagues, and our fellow citizens; we owe love to our own people.
 
By learning to love those with whom we immediately share the gift of life, we become, by the grace of God, capable of recognizing in every human person a brother and an icon of God. Only by loving our own – by loving our own people – do we become capable of loving others, of loving those who are different from us, and of loving and respecting other people and other nations.
 
Accordingly, I once again pray to the Lord and call upon all of us to rise, as far as we are able, above narrow, selfish, and ideologically motivated particular interests, and, in the spirit of Christian and Orthodox conciliarity, to transcend divisions and discord. I appeal to you not in my own words, but in the words of the Holy Apostle Paul, the great saint of God, who implored the Christians of Corinth: “Now I beseech you, brethren, by the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you; but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it has been declared to me concerning you, my brethren, that there are contentions among you” (1 Cor. 1:10–11).
 
These words of the Holy Apostle Paul remain, to this very day, the words of the Church of Christ – the words of the Church of Saint Sava. They call us to recognize one another as brothers, to forgive and to seek forgiveness from one another, to open our hearts to one another, and to know that no one is superfluous, but that each person is needed by every other and that every human being is precious. We are called to preserve peace and concord among ourselves, but also to live in peace, mutual respect, and good neighborliness with all people and all nations with whom we share this blessed land.
 
Let us remember the biblical account of the Hebrew people, who once wandered through the desert for forty years, learning above all to remember one thing: their Covenant, and to seek their strength in faithfulness to God. The desert became a school in which the people learned anew who they were and to whom they belonged, whence they had come, what their purpose was, and to what they had been called. For a people, however terrible and unbearable it may be, do not perish first of all when they lose their land and their homes. The deepest fall of a nation begins earlier – when it forgets who it is, to whom it belongs, what its calling is, and upon what covenant it is founded.
 
From such forgetfulness arise divisions; brother becomes estranged from brother; concord and unity disappear, and without them it is difficult to preserve anything, let alone to build. Therefore, our prayerful remembrance is at one and the same time the preservation of our identity, the safeguarding of our covenant, and the preservation of the awareness of who and what we are. By remembering our sufferers and our ancestral homeland, we remember who we are, to whom we belong, and whose we are. We belong to Christ, to His Church, to one another, and to the Saint Sava Orthodox Serbian people. Only in this way do we remain gathered together even when scattered, spiritually rooted even when far from our ancestral hearths.
 
Having once again offered our prayers for our brothers and sisters who suffered during those tragic days of August 1995, as well as for all who were forced to leave their ancestral homes and embark upon the path of exile, let us conclude our address with the prayerful supplication of blessed memory Patriarch Pavle:
 
"O Lord Jesus Christ, our God, receive this our fervent supplication and forgive us our sins. Help us, O Thou who didst go to the Cross and endure death for the salvation of all, that hatred may give way to love, unrest to peace, and sorrow to joy, both among us and throughout the whole world, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life as Thy people and as brethren one with another. O Lord of peace and love, help us to return to the path that leads to Thee. Preserve our land and our people from injustice, violence, mutual strife, and discord, and do not remove the lampstand of our Church from before Thee. For Thou art the God of mercy, goodness, and love for mankind, and unto Thee we ascribe glory – the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen."
 
May eternal memory be granted to all our brothers and sisters who innocently suffered in the terrible expulsion from their ancestral homes known as Operation Storm.
 
Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!
 
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On 4 August 2026, His Holiness Serbian Patriarch Porfirije served a memorial service for the innocent victims of Operation Storm in King Peter I Karađorđević Square in Mrkonjić Grad.
 
Concelebrating with His Holiness were: His Eminence Metropolitan of Kruševac kyr David; Their Graces Bishop of Bihać-Petrovac kyr Sergije and Vicar Bishop of Marča kyr Sava; Archimandrites Varnava (Damjanović), Vasilije (Rožić), and Jerotej (Vlajković); Protopresbyters-Stavrophors Dragan Škalonja, Nikola Peno, Savo Janković, Saša Crljić, and Miladin Samardžić; Protopresbyters Aleksandar Đurić and Savko Plavšić; and Protodeacons Dragan Radić, Radojica Žagran, and Nemanja Reljić.
 
Following the addresses delivered by the President of the Republic of Serbia Mr. Aleksandar Vučić, Mr. Milorad Dodik, and Mr. Milan Knežević, a commemorative program was held in memory of all those who suffered and were driven from their ancestral homes.