Franc Perko

Franc Perko, (born 19 November 1929) is a Slovenian Roman Catholic prelate. He was the archbishop of the Archdiocese of Belgrade in Serbia between 1986 and 2001. He died on 20 February 2008 in Ljubljana (Slovenia)

He was also the president of the International Bishops' Conference of Saints Cyril and Methodius between 1993 and 2001.

Biography

Youth and education

Franc Perko was born in Krka as the third child of father Janez and mother Jožefa.

In 1936 he began attending primary school, and then in 1941 he enrolled in the Diocesan Classical Gymnasium, Ljubljana. However, this institution was closed during World War II, so in 1945 he enrolled in the state classical gymnasium and successfully graduated in 1949.

In the autumn of 1949 he began studying at University of Ljubljana at the then state Faculty of Theology in Ljubljana, which was separated from the state university in 1952 and subsequently operated as an independent private church faculty.

Church activities He was ordained a priest by bishop ob Ljubljana Anton Vovk in 1953. After a first mass, he received a call to serve in the military service in Belgrade. After completing it, he was imprisoned for several years for a mere verbal delict; he fell into a deep depression and this injustice marked him for the rest of his life and so he became a pronounced anti-communist. After illegal espionage, he was namely accused of "enemy propaganda", although it was only an innocent joke at Tito's expense.

In 1964, he became a lecturer at the Faculty of Theology in Ljubljana, and in the fall of 1965, he went to study in Rome, where he also received a doctorate at the Pontifical Oriental Institute.

Archbishop and Metropolitan of Belgrade On 16 December 1986, Pope John Paul II appointed him Archbishop of Belgrade and the first Metropolitan of Belgrade. The Pope also consecrated him in St. Peter's Basilica on 6 January 1987. in order to be closer to the thinking of Eastern Christians, the basic motto was in Greek.

On the one hand, this motto expresses the ecumenical effort for cooperation and rapprochement between Christians; on the other hand, it expresses his inner conviction that Christians – especially Catholics and Orthodox – are already united in the Holy Spirit, although not yet formally. In this conviction, upon taking office – at least at the beginning – he did not consider the requests of Catholics who, for some reason, would like to return from Orthodoxy, where they may have been carried away by love or some similar human reason, saying that we Christians are already one. However, he soon realized that this unity, at least outwardly, had not yet been achieved and he followed the usual procedure, which was especially evident in the arrangement of so-called mixed marriages, in which, for example, the groom was Catholic and the bride was Orthodox. Even more complicated was the issue of marriages that Catholics had contracted in the Orthodox Church before March 25, 1967. Since then, the Catholic Church has allowed Catholics to marry before an Orthodox priest for important reasons with the permission of a bishop; the marriage has become valid even without this permission. Marriages that had been invalidly concluded in the Orthodox Church before this time could be ordered to be rescinded with "sanatio in radice".

Works Uvod v ekumensko bogoslovje (1963) Vzhodne cerkve (1967) Nauk o cerkvi (1967 — more editions) Eden je gospod (1973) Principi ekumenizma (1974) Verstva v Jugoslaviji (1978). He contributed more than 200 articles to the "Bogoslovni vestnik", "Cerkev v setanjem svetu", and the anthology "V edinosti" ("In Unity"); between 1971-1988 he was also one of the co-editors of this ecumenical anthology.

Death and memory

Resignation and retirement In 2001, however, he resigned from the position of Archbishop of Belgrade, as he had requested retirement several times in the 1990s due to a long-standing serious illness. After returning to Slovenia, he settled with the Sisters of the Holy Cross in Mala Loka near Domžale, where he had already lived as a professor. Archbishop Perko was also a member of the Episcopal Conference of Slovenia, within which he was responsible for the field of ecumenism.

Death and funeral He died in the priest's home on Lepi pot in Ljubljana on Wednesday, 20 February 2008, at the age of 79, as the retired or emeritus Archbishop and Metropolitan of Belgrade. On Thursday morning, he was transported to the Ljubljana Cathedral, where the evening mass for the repose of his soul was offered by the Archbishop and Metropolitan of Ljubljana Alojzij Uran. On Saturday, 23 February, his funeral was held at noon in Cemetery of Žale. It was led by the Archbishop and Metropolitan of Belgrade and his successor Stanislav Hočevar.

Scientific conference On February 20, 2018, a scientific conference was held in the large hall of the Faculty of Theology in Ljubljana on the tenth anniversary of the death of Professor and Archbishop Franc Perko (1929-2008) and on the 140th anniversary of his birth, on his professor Franc Grivec (1878-1963); he was the one who inspired him most for ecumenism.

Ten excellent lecturers took part, professionally assessing his important work as an academic and lecturer, as a Catholic bishop and humanitarian, and especially as a committed ecumenical worker.