 In 1994, the Greek Orthodox Church declared Radovan Karadžić as "one of the most prominent sons of our Lord Jesus Christ working for peace" and decorated him with the nine-hundred-year-old Knights' Order of the First Rank of Saint Dionysius of Xanthe.Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew announced that "the Serbian people have been chosen by God to protect the western frontiers of Orthodoxy".Despite strained ties during Josip Broz Tito's rule of Yugoslavia, Serbian-Greek relations reached the point where the creation of a state for Serbs and Greeks was seriously proposed by Slobodan Milošević in 1992.