TENSION IN BELGRADE.

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20257, 28 July 1937, Page 7

TENSION IN BELGRADE.

MOURNING FOR PATRIARCH. APPEAL TO DEFEND CHURCH. CLASHES WITH THE POLICE. United Press Assn.—Elec. Tel. Copyright. (Received July 28, 1 p.m.) BELGRADE, July 27. Tension underlies the' city’s deep mourning lor the Patriarch Varnava, past whose bier mourners defiled all day. City police, to whom the populace is less hostile, replaced gendarmerie near the cathedral, but the gendarmerie truculently swing their truncheons in full force in the fashionable' promenade of Saint Michael. Thousands of leaflets have been circulated adjuring, members of the Orthodox Church to defend the Church against the' Pope as they defended it against the Kaiser and against the Sultan. The funeral of the Patriarch on July 29 is expected lo yield scenes comparable with King Alexander’s obsequies in 1937. The Government discountenances the ex-communications of July 25. The Orthodox Synod retorted by suspending the religious rights of 100 members of Parliament, supporters of the Concordat, and by convening a church tribunal to adjudicate regarding, the ex-communications. Learning that the daughter of an ex-communicated Parliamentarian, M. Lukarevltch, desired to marry, members of the Orthodox Church refused to allow the oeremony or grant a birth certificate enabling her to marry elsewhere.