PRIEST BORIS TOPIĆ: I HAD HONOUR OF BEING WITH GENERAL MLADIĆ IN HIS FINAL HOURS

BELGRADE, AUGUST 27 /SRNA/ - Priest Boris Topić of the Rotterdam-Hague parish, who heard General Ratko Mladić’s confession and gave him Holy Communion shortly before his death, said that it was a great honor for him to be with the general during his final hours and that it was no coincidence that he passed away on the eve of the great feast of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos.

“The general confessed and received Holy Communion with a cross in his hand, as befits a Serbian hero,” Father Boris told SRNA. He added that the general passed away about 15 minutes after their meeting and that he was informed of his death by the general’s son, Darko Mladić, with whom he speaks after each visit to the general. Father Boris said that General Mladić had been in worse condition recently than before and that he had been battling his illness and everything that had befallen him. “I had been spending time with him for quite a while. The last time we met, before today, we played chess. That was in June. He was 83 years old and had suffered two strokes, but he was a fighter, and he still played chess very well and regularly won,” Father Boris said. He said it had been a great honour to be by the side of such a man and spend time with him, not merely listening to him but also talking with him. “I suppose we both learned something from each other,” Topić said. He added that he did not view the general’s death as an end and that he did not believe in coincidences. “I see it this way: it was not a coincidence that he went to confession and received Holy Communion today, nor that he passed away on the eve of a major feast, as tomorrow is the Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God. It was not a coincidence that the Lord sent me either. I could have come on Monday or Wednesday, but it happened today,” Father Boris stressed. General Ratko Mladić, wartime commander of the Main Staff of the Republika Srpska Army, died at a detention hospital in The Hague at the age of 83. General Mladić had been in a detention hospital in The Hague since 2024, where he had been bedridden for the past year and a half, while the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague ignored calls for him to be released on humanitarian grounds to receive medical treatment in Serbia.