(TRUNEWS) Leaders of the Serbian Orthodox church have asked the State Department to look into a string of church fires that occurred Sunday.
There were blazes at four churches that day – two in Australia, one in Russia and the other in New York City, according to the New York Post.
“Anything can be suspected — including that the fires were started on purpose and were not accidental,” said Patriarch Irinej told Nedeljnik.
The church fire in New York, at Manhattan’s Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sava, occurred just after Easter services.
“Too many churches have burned to call it an accident,” former Serbian ambassador Dusan T. Batakovic said. “It is very strange that it happened, that the fires all took place on Easter, the greatest Christian Orthodox holiday. Some kind of terrorist action cannot be excluded.”
Officials believe candles may have caused the blaze in New York, but another theory involves possible retaliation for the church writing a letter to Pope Francis to encourage him to block the canonization of Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac, an alleged Nazi supporter.
‘We are afraid that there are too many open questions and wounds which Cardinal Stepinac symbolizes,” Irinej wrote, as reported by Daily Mail. “His canonization, to our great regret, would return the relations between Serbs and Croats, as well as between Catholics and Orthodox faithful, back to their tragic history.”
Flames at the Manhattan church reached 50 feet and caused a stained glass window to explode. The outer walls are all that are left. No one was in the building at the time.
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