Patriarch Pavle leads the Easter liturgy on Sunday

April 11, 1999
Web posted at: 5:16 a.m. EDT (0916 GMT)

ISTANBUL, Turkey (CNN) -- The spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians called for the respect of human life early Sunday as the war over Kosovo cast a pall on Easter celebrations throughout the region.

Easter, the anniversary of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is observed by some 300 million Orthodox on Sunday. Roman Catholics and Protestants celebrated Easter a week earlier.

Many religious leaders prayed for peace on Easter.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I urged "respect for life itself, the life of our fellow human beings, the life of our opponent, the life of our enemy," in his Easter encyclical read in Istanbul's Cathedral of St. George.

Dressed in a traditional white and gold gown, the head of the Serbian Orthodox church conducted midnight mass for several hundred people at the Cathedral Church in downtown Belgrade.

An unidentified priest read the Easter address from Patriarch Pavle and his bishops.

"We pray for peace and goodwill among people, but now we are suffering," the statement said.

The head of Russia's Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexy II, called for an end to NATO bombings and urged Russians to "look jointly for ways to solve Russian and international problems."

"This unique, God-given opportunity to break the vicious circle of violence should not be lost," Alexy said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.

Romania's President Emil Constantinescu, who supports NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia, also urged the alliance to end the bombings for Easter.

The war, including NATO bombings, are "definitely on people's minds," said Ali Sophocles, a Greek Orthodox Christian from Wayland, Massachusetts, attending the ceremony in Istanbul.

"We stopped for Ramadan when we bombed Iraq, I don't see why we don't stop for Easter," said Chris Hummel from Fort Myers, Florida. Both are students in Archeology at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire on a study visit to Turkey.

NATO officials, however, have said a bombing campaign will continue until a crackdown by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on ethnic Albanians stops, and Yugoslavia agrees to accept peacekeeping troops in Kosovo.

The patriarchate in Turkey dates from the 1,100-year-old Orthodox Greek Byzantine Empire, which collapsed when the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople, today's Istanbul, in 1453.

Patriarch Bartholomew presides over 14 autonomous Orthodox churches, including those of Greece, Russia, Serbia, Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.