There is something dizzying about contemplating the map of Europe in early June 2026. In Brussels, the debate continues over whether to sanction the Patriarch of Moscow—a churchman who, in the eyes of many, has become an instrument of a war ideology. In Rome, a new pope, Leo XIV, has barely found his footing after the fruitful but exhausting pontificate of Francis. And in Belgrade, a city absent from any postcard of ecumenism, a discreet cardinal is patiently weaving threads that the war in Ukraine seems, every day, to threaten to break. This cardinal is Ladislav Nemet—the first Serbian cardinal in history, archbishop of a predominantly Orthodox capital—and his very existence is a theological manifesto: that of a man condemned, by his geography and his vocation, never to choose sides, because his side is unity.
The moment is all the more critical as Patriarch Kirill of Moscow has just responded, in his customary language of eschatological civilization, to the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas of Leo XIV. This response, predictable in its form, reflects a rift that the war has made doctrinal: the Moscow Patriarchate, under its leadership, endorsed a vision of the Ukrainian conflict as a «holy war,» pitting a civilization faithful to God against an apostate West. Rome cannot recognize itself in this. And yet, the two Churches cannot—theologically, spiritually, pastorally—resign themselves to mutual ignorance. It is in this Gordian knot that Nemet’s ministry finds its full depth.
The Broken Legacy: When War Becomes Theology
The temptation of "holy war" and the Russian Orthodox tradition
To understand the chasm that has opened up between Rome and Moscow since February 2022, we must take seriously the worldview articulated by Patriarch Kirill, and not dismiss it as mere propaganda. His position—however deeply unsettling it may be—is rooted in a genuine theological tradition, that of the symphony between the Church and the State inherited from Byzantium, and an eschatological reading of history in which Russia occupies a providentially unique mission. When he declares that the armed conflict in Ukraine is "the reflection of a more global confrontation of civilizations," he is not merely serving a political discourse: he is expressing a religious cosmology where the temporal struggle is coupled with a metaphysical stake concerning the destiny of humanity.
The Catholic Church is not unfamiliar with the notion of just war — the doctrine This tradition dates back to Saint Augustine and was systematized by Saint Thomas Aquinas. But this tradition insists precisely on strict criteria: just cause, right intention, legitimate authority, proportionality, and a realistic prospect of success. However, what the Moscow Patriarchate has promoted is not just war as understood by the Catholic tradition; it is something closer to holy war, where legitimacy stems not from a rational analysis of means and ends, but from a mystical identification between the national cause and the cause of God. The call for the "annihilation of Ukrainian independence" as an act of Orthodox piety represents a break with the entire patristic tradition shared by the two Churches.
It is here that Cardinal Yves Congar—whose ecumenical theology remains an essential reference for understanding the relationship between Rome and the Eastern Churches—would undoubtedly have spoken of the difference between unity and uniformity, between communion in truth and fusion in national identity. The Second Vatican Council, in its decree Unitatis Redintegratio, had taken care to recognize in the Eastern Churches "their own spirit and history" — but this praise of legitimate diversity cannot validate a theology that blesses weapons.
Belgrade: a city between two worlds
It is in this context that Belgrade's geographical and ecclesiological position takes on an almost symbolic value. The city is the seat of both a Catholic cardinal and an Orthodox patriarch—Porfirije, a leading figure of ecumenism within Balkan Orthodoxy, a theologian renowned for his openness to dialogue. This is not a coincidence but a blessing: in a city where Catholics and Orthodox have coexisted for centuries in ways that have been sometimes tense, sometimes fruitful, the simultaneous presence of these two pastors creates a unique configuration within the European ecclesiastical landscape.
Cardinal Nemet knows this better than anyone. A missionary trained in the Balkans, fluent in seven languages, and having served in Belgrade, Vienna, and Budapest, he embodies the very type of pastor trained to embrace otherness. When he declares that "Russia must not be excluded from the European family," it is not diplomatic naiveté: it is a theological affirmation. No Church, no people, no spiritual tradition can be definitively excluded from the movement of reconciliation that the Gospel commands. But this conviction does not mean accepting the unacceptable: it means distinguishing, with the patience of discernment, between the Russian people and their hierarchies, between the Russian Orthodox tradition and its current instrumentalization.
The grammar of dialogue: what ecumenism requires in times of war
Prayer as a space of resistance
The apostle Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, writes something that should be pondered by anyone who thinks that ecumenism is a matter for theological commissions: «"For he himself is our peace, who has made the two peoples one, having broken down the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility."» (Ephesians 2:14). This «wall of separation» that Paul speaks of is not only the wall between Jews and Gentiles in Pauline theology: it is the figure of every border—national, denominational, ideological—that humanity erects to protect itself from the other and which ends up imprisoning itself. The war in Ukraine did not create this wall between Rome and Moscow: it made it visible, raised it, armed it.
In this context, communal prayer — that Unitatis Redintegratio Identified as early as 1964 as "the soul of the ecumenical movement"—this becomes an act of spiritual resistance. Not political resistance, not protest, but a refusal to let war dictate its law to the liturgy. Cardinal Walter Kasper, one of the great architects of Catholic-Orthodox dialogue in the decades following the Council, often insisted on this point: ecumenical dialogue cannot be reduced to doctrinal negotiations; it must be rooted in a shared spiritual experience, in the mutual recognition of the same baptismal faith, even where dogmatic formulas diverge. This conviction now takes the form of an existential challenge: how to keep alive a common prayer with a Church whose supreme hierarchy blesses a war of aggression?
Nemet's response—and it deserves careful consideration—is to distinguish between different levels of interlocutors. Patriarch Kirill does not represent the entire Russian Orthodox Church. Belgrade illustrates this concretely: in February 2025, Patriarch Porfiryje received a high-level delegation from the Russian Orthodox Church—not to endorse the war, but to maintain channels of communication that political forces were trying to close. It is this logic that Nemet perpetuates at the Catholic level: the Belgrade-Rome bridge is not an endorsement of Moscow, but a resistance to the bloc mentality that would have each Church choose its geopolitical side.
Ecclesiological status: what communion is still possible?
The most delicate theological question in this context is not that of just war—on which Catholic and Orthodox positions certainly diverge, but can mutually explain each other. The most profound question is that of the ecclesial communion : what remains when an autocephalous Church seems to have merged its identity with that of a state at war? For Rome, which carefully distinguishes the universal magisterium of the Church from the magisterium of a local Church, the question has a clear doctrinal answer: even a particular Church which goes astray doctrinally or morally does not cease to be a Church in the strong theological sense — it retains its sacraments, its episcopate, its faithful, and its call to conversion.
This is precisely what the Catholic Church, since the Second Vatican Council, recognizes in the separated Eastern Churches: "the sacraments, and first and foremost the priesthood and the Eucharist, which still unite them with us by very close ties" (Unitatis Redintegratio, 15). This recognition is not a political endorsement; it is an act of ecclesiological faith. And it is because it rests on a doctrinal foundation—and not on cultural or diplomatic affinities—that it withstands the Ukrainian upheaval. The dialogue does not continue despite the crisis; it continues because of the crisis, because that is precisely where it finds its deepest reason for being.
Cardinal Nemet embodies this conviction with remarkable consistency. When the Serbian Prime Minister invited the Pope to Belgrade, Nemet immediately clarified that this visit could not take place without the agreement of the Serbian Orthodox Church—not out of pusillanimity, but because a papal visit undertaken against the will of the country's majority church would constitute not a gesture of openness, but an act of ecclesiological provocation. This attention to the concrete conditions of dialogue is a sign of genuine ecumenical maturity: dialogue is not a top-down affair, but a reciprocal one.
The Belgrade Prophecy: Towards an Ecclesiology of the Periphery
Cyril and Methodius as a paradigm
It is not insignificant that the international episcopal conference, which Ladislav Nemet chaired before his appointment in Belgrade, was placed under the patronage of Saints Cyril and Methodius. These two Thessalonian brothers, apostles to the Slavs in the 9th century, represent precisely what one might call a ecclesiology of the middle They were neither Latins nor Greeks, but bearers of a synthesis that refused to reduce Christianity to one or the other of its cultural expressions. They invented the Glagolitic alphabet so that the Slavs could pray in their own language—a theological as well as a cultural act, a radical rejection of the idea that faith should be the preserve of a particular civilization.
It is in this tradition that Nemet fits in, whose personal biography — born in Serbia, educated in Hungary, having practiced in Vienna — is already a living refutation of any theology of identity withdrawal. «"Catholic"», In the literal sense, "universal" means universal—not uniformly Roman, but open to all nations, all languages, all traditions. Yet the Catholic Church in Serbia is a numerical minority in a country where Orthodoxy is fundamental to the national identity. This minority status is not a theological weakness: it is a school of ecclesial humility, a training in dialogue that majority churches often lack the opportunity to experience.
To suffer with, not instead of
The prophet Ezekiel one day received this strange command from God: «Son of man, you live in the midst of a rebellious house.» (Ezekiel 2:6). The literal Hebrew translation is even more physical: "you sit in the very heart of the thorns." This image says something essential about Cardinal Nemet's vocation: not to overlook the conflict from a position of comfort, but to remain at the heart of the tensions — between Rome and Moscow, between Catholics and Orthodox, between the Serbian people and their Church — without ever pretending that complexity is simple, or that peace is cheap.
Cardinal Kasper, whose ecumenical theology remains a guiding principle, readily distinguished between the ecumenism of the doctrinal convergence — slow, patient, commission work — and the ecumenism of the spiritual communion — more immediate, and also more fragile, because it involves people and not documents. In the current crisis, it is clearly the latter that takes precedence. It is not a matter of waiting for a hypothetical joint commission on the theology of war to resume dialogue; it is a matter of continuing to meet, to pray, to recognize each other as baptized people seeking the face of God — even when politics makes this scandalous in the eyes of the world.
This logic — suffering with the Russian Orthodox Church in its error, and not to presume to give it lessons from the outside — recalls the Pauline conception of the body: «"If one member suffers, all members suffer with him."» (1 Corinthians 12:26). Ecclesial communion is not a communion of constant agreement; it is a communion of shared spiritual responsibility, where even the failings of one call for the prayers of the other. This is not naiveté: it is ecclesiology.
Patience as a theological virtue
Nemet's challenge—and, through him, that of the entire Catholic Church in its relationship with Slavic Orthodoxy—is ultimately one of duration. The wounds inflicted by the war will not heal in a few years. The Moscow Patriarchate, even in a post-Syril scenario, will long bear the marks of a decade of intertwining ecclesiastical identity and national propaganda. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, for its part, has definitively broken with Moscow—and this ecclesiological rupture has repercussions throughout the Orthodox world, including in Serbia.
In this fractured landscape, the presence of a Catholic cardinal in Belgrade—present since December 2024, thrust into the Serbian political arena in the summer of 2025 when he called for calm during the anti-corruption protests—is not insignificant. It signifies that the Catholic Church has a partner. anchor In the Slavic Orthodox world: not an outside observer, but someone who shares the life of this people, who suffers from its tensions, who knows its patriarchs, its priests, its faithful. This embodied presence is, ultimately, the primary condition for any authentic dialogue. One does not engage in dialogue with abstractions; one engages in dialogue with faces.
And it is perhaps here, in this vocation to geographical and spiritual embodiment, that the figure of Cardinal Nemet says something essential to the entire Church: that ecumenism is not achieved in the halls of international conferences, but in fractured cities, in parish halls where two liturgical traditions regard each other with a mistrust inherited from centuries past, in the patient gestures of those who refuse to let political hatred have the final say on baptismal communion. Belgrade is not Rome, nor Moscow, nor Jerusalem. But at the dawn of the third millennium, it is perhaps one of the places where the future of Christian unity in Europe is being played out, discreetly but truly.
✝ Biblical references
3 passages · 3 books
If I do not have love, I am nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:2)
Unity of the Church, ethical problems and a hymn to charity for the Corinthian community.
→ Explore the Codex 1 Corinthians- Leo XIV in Madrid: when praise for multilateralism becomes a message to Moscow and Beijing
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- «Let us entrust them to Mary»: the Regina Caeli as an act of resistance for Eastern Christians
- When the Spirit blows against the current: the Charismatic Renewal, a sign of contradiction for France in 2026
Put on the armor of God to stand firm. (Ephesians 6:11)
Mystery of the Church, body of Christ: unity, new life and spiritual battle.
→ Explore the Codex Ephesians
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. (Ezekiel 36:26)
Apocalyptic visions, oracles of judgment, and the promise of the restoration of Israel.
→ Explore the Ezekiel Codex
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In Serbia, Catholics today constitute a minority, primarily located in Vojvodina, in a country largely marked by Orthodoxy. The Christian evangelization of the territory dates back to the early Middle Ages, in the context…
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In Russia, Catholics today represent only a tiny minority in a space dominated by Orthodoxy and a highly centralized power. The early Christian presence in the territory dates back to the conversion of…
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