A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

H.E. Mr. Vuk Jeremić, president of the sixty-seventh session of the United Nations General Assembly

Vuk Jeremić was elected President of the sixty-seventh session of the United Nations General Assembly on 8 June 2012. At the time of his election, he was serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Repubic of Serbia, an office he held starting on 15 May 2007.

Throughout his five years as Foreign Minister, Mr. Jeremić was actively engaged in the work of the United Nations, representing his country at key sessions of the General Assembly and the Security Council. He led the Serbian delegation at high-level segments of the United Nations Human Rights Council (2008, 2010 and 2011), at the annual General Conference of the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and at high-level meetings of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations.

Mr. Jeremić also represented Serbia at the Fourth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries (Istanbul, 2011), the United Nations HighLevel Meeting on Nuclear Security (New York, 2011) and the 2010 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (New York, 2010).

.

Elsewhere, Mr. Jeremić led his country’s delegation at high-level meetings of the African Union, the Organization of American States and the Non-Aligned Movement. In September 2011, he hosted a commemorative observance at the ministerial level for the fiftieth anniversary of the Non-Aligned Movement, in Belgrade.

During his term as Foreign Minister, Mr. Jeremić was actively involved with deliberations of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), participating in meetings of its Ministerial Council; informal meetings of OSCE foreign ministers (Almaty, Kazakhstan, 2010 and Corfu, Greece, 2009); and in the eleventh OSCE Summit that took place in Astana, Kazakhstan (2010).

In 2011 and 2012, Mr. Jeremić presided over a number of regional organizations of South-East Europe, including the Central European Initiative, the Adriatic Ionian Initiative and the Southeast Europe Cooperation Process. In this capacity, he addressed several special sessions of the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna. During this period, Mr. Jeremić also served as head of the Migration, Asylum and Refugees Regional Initiative and the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization.
Earlier, Mr. Jeremić chaired the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers (May to November 2007), representing the Committee before the Council’s Parliamentary Assembly. From 2008 to 2012, he headed his country’s delegation to all ministerial sessions of the Committee and addressed three sessions of the Council’s Forum for the Future of Democracy, in Sweden (2007), Armenia (2010) and Cyprus (2011).

In 2010 and 2011, Mr. Jeremić played a leading role in convening two groundbreaking conferences of foreign ministers, aimed at resolving the plight of refugees uprooted by the 1991-1995 crisis in the Western Balkans.

Mr. Jeremić began his career in public service as Adviser to the Minister of Telecommunications of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in the year 2000. In June 2003, he was appointed Adviser for Foreign Affairs to the Minister of Defence of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, and in February 2004, he was appointed Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Democratic Party. Later that year, in July 2004, he became Senior Foreign Policy Adviser to the President of the Republic of Serbia, continuing in this capacity until taking up the position of Foreign Minister in May 2007.

Before entering the political sphere, Mr. Jeremić worked for a number of financial institutions in London, including Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Kleinwort Benson, as well as for AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals.

Mr. Jeremić has lectured at major universities around the world, and participated in debates and discussions convened by think tanks and organizations focusing on global issues, including the Economist magazine, World Economic Forum, Chatham House, the Bled Strategic Forum, the Aspen Institute and the MEDays Forum of the Amadeus Institute. His opinion pieces have been published in major newspapers including The New York Times, International Herald Tribune and The Wall Street Journal.

Fluent in English, in addition to his native Serbian, Mr. Jeremić holds a Bachelor of Science degree in theoretical physics from Cambridge University (United Kingdom) and a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (United States).

Mr. Jeremić was born in Belgrade in 1975, and is married to Nataša Jeremić. An avid tennis fan, he is currently president of the Serbian Tennis Federation.

Source: United Nations web-site

Links:


SA

 

People Directory

Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich

Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich
SERBIAN ORTHODOX APOSTLE TO AMERICA
by Hieromonk Damascene (Christensen)
St. Herman of Alaska Monastery, Platina, California

 

 

1. An Apostle of Universal Significance

Born during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, Archimandrite Sebastian Dabovich has the distinction of being the first person born in the United States of America to be ordained as an Orthodox priest,[1] and also the first native-born American to be tonsured as an Orthodox monk. His greatest distinction, however, lies in the tremendous apostolic, pastoral, and literary work that he accomplished during the forty-eight years of his priestly ministry. Known as the "Father of Serbian Orthodoxy in America,"[2] he was responsible for the founding of the first Serbian churches in the NewWorld. This, however, was only one part of his life's work, for he tirelessly and zealously sought to spread the Orthodox Faith to all peoples, wherever he was called. He was an Orthodox apostle of universal significance.

Read more ...

Publishing

Sailors of the Sky

A conversation with Fr. Stamatis Skliris and Fr. Marko Rupnik on contemporary Christian art

In these timely conversations led by Fr. Radovan Bigovic, many issues are introduced that enable the contemporary reader to deepen and expand his or her understanding of the role of art in the life of the Church. Here we find answers to questions on the crisis of contemporary ecclesiastical art in West and East; the impact of Impressionism, Expressionism, Cubism, Surrealism and Abstract painting on contemporary ecclesiastical painting; and a consideration of the main distrinction between iconography and secular painting. The dialogue, while resolving some doubts about the difference between iconography, religious painting, and painting in general, reconciles the requirement to obey inconographic canons with the freedom essential to artistic creativity, demonstrating that obedience to the canons is not a threat to the vitatlity of iconography. Both artists illumine the role of prayer and ascetisicm in the art of iconography. They also mention curcial differences between iconography in the Orthodox Church and in Roman Catholicism. How important thse distinctions are when exploring the relationship between contemporary theology and art! In a time when postmodern "metaphysics' revitalizes every concept, these masters still believe that, to some extent, Post-Modernism adds to the revitatiztion of Christian art, stimulating questions about "artistic inspiration" and the essential asethetic categories of Christian painting. Their exceptionally wide, yet nonetheless deep, expertise assists their not-so-everday connections between theology, ar, and modern issues concerning society: "society" taken in its broader meaning as "civilization." Finally, the entire artistic project of Stamatis and Rupnik has important ecumenical implications that aswer a genuine longing for unity in the Christian word.

The text of this 94-page soft-bound book has been translated from the Serbian by Ivana Jakovljevic, Fr. Gregory Edwards, and Andrijana Krstic. Published by Sebastian Press, Western American Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Contemporary Christian Thought Series, number 7, First Edition, ISBN: 978-0-9719505-8-0