Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has expressed...

Patriarch Pavle, elected to head the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1990, died Sunday at 95 of cardiac arrest during his sleep after having been hospitalized for two years in the Belgrade Military Medical Academy. Serbia began three days of official national mourning on Monday.

"His patriarchal feat became a vivid example of a noble and selfless service to the Church and fatherland, of a care about his nation"s expectations and interests," Medvedev"s telegram said. "The period when Patriarch Pavle was on the Pec throne coincided with the hardest trials his compatriots faced."

His Holiness Archbishop of Pec, Metropolitan of Belgrade and Karlovci, Serbian Patriarch Pavle was the oldest living leader of an Eastern Orthodox church. He called for peace and reconciliation in the 1990s during the inter-ethnic conflicts that resulted in the breakup of Yugoslavia.

In 2000, the Serbian Church, which had previously abstained from confrontation, openly called on Slobodan Milosevic,

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