DODIK: PAYING HOMAGE AT HOLY SITES IN JERUSALEM - PROFOUND ENCOUNTER WITH FAITH AND ROOTS

JERUSALEM, SEPTEMBER 8 /SRNA/ - President Milorad Dodik said that it was a great honor for him that Patriarch Theophilos III of Jerusalem presented him with a gramata in Jerusalem, as a testimony to his paying homage to and offering gifts to the holy sites in the Holy Land.

"There are places before which a person stops, falls silent and feels how small he is before eternity. Paying homage at the places of Christ's suffering and resurrection is not merely a journey or a memory that one carries with them - it is a profound encounter with faith, with one's own roots and with that which has sustained us throughout the centuries," Dodik wrote on X.

Dodik added that being a pilgrim in the Orthodox tradition was a great honor for him, but an even greater obligation.

"So that we do not forget who we are, whom we belong to and upon what spiritual foundations our people and our Republika Srpska were built. A person does not return from Jerusalem the same. He returns with an even stronger faith in his heart and with gratitude for who we are and whom we belong to," Dodik stressed.