Monday, April 05, 1999
War worries congregation
Many have familial ties in Balkans
BY TOM O'NEILL
The Cincinnati Enquirer
NORWOOD — With his church followers gathered around after Palm Sunday services, Father Steven Kostoff did an unusual thing Sunday morning: He stood up and read his mail aloud.
Father Kostoff's e-mail and faxes were not only about the Kosovo region; some had been sent from there.
The members of Christ the Savior-Holy Spirit Orthodox Church in Norwood, many of whom have relatives in the Balkans, were riveted.
A fax from Serbian Patriarch Pavle, president of the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade, asked for prayers that “peace would be granted to our tortured and suffering nation, but also to other people who live together with us.”
At the post-liturgy discussion, church members listened, asked questions and ex pressed the shared hope that peace will prevail in a region torn first by ethnic fighting and now by a massive NATO bombing campaign.
“It makes the world smaller,” church member Ted Petro said of Father Kostoff's unconventional mail deliveries.
Mr. Petro, 24, a doctoral candidate in the University of Cincinnati history department, is like most of his fellow church members — an American, born and raised. His grandmother was from Macedonia; his grandfather was from Albania.
Father Kostoff expressed hope for a “peaceful week.” Next Sunday is Easter in the Orthodox calendar.
Christ the Savior is an ethnically diverse church of about 70 members, the overwhelming majority of whom stayed for Father Kostoff's discussion group. Members have family roots in Serbia, Yugoslavia, Albania and — in the reverend's case — Macedonia.
Their lives changed when NATO began airstrikes in the Kosovo region recently. What are for many Americans just locations on a map in a far-away land are for church members former homes, or the homes of relatives.
Most of those who were asked for comment Sunday declined. They don't want their fellow Americans to misconstrue their concerns for “the old country” as disloyalty. Some consider the subject sim ply too volatile.
The focus Sunday continued to be about people, not politics. All the mail emphasized the need for a peaceful solution to a complicated dispute.
Other communications Father Kostoff read aloud Sunday included a fax from the Green Orthodox Archdiocese archbishop in New York and an e-mailed appeal for peace from a Russian orthodox church leader, Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow.
The patriarch's message read in part: “Stop the strife and begin dialogue immediately.”
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