future President of Serbia Boris Tadić, didn't know the intended purpose of the unfinished construction, so they played inside thinking it was a ruin of an old castle. The granite slabs, intended for the construction of the church, were used for the building of the Tomb of People's Heroes in 1948, in the Kalemegdan section of the Belgrade Fortress. Construction ban After the end of World War II, the building site was closed due to the changing political situation and the dominant ideological position of communism in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Soon after the war, the material and financial possibilities to resume construction were dim. The communist elite identified themselves as atheists and rejected the request of the Serbian Orthodox Church to build the site. The unfinished building was transformed to a playground and even various circus troupes used it for their purposes. Despite decades of efforts by the Serbian Patriarch German to continue building (and after he made 88 requests from 1958 onwards, of which 82 were sent to the President of Yugoslavia Josip Broz Tito, to which Tito never personally replied) all of them were rejected by government authorities. Permission was finally granted in 1984 when the patriarch was invited to Dušan Čkrebić, President of Presidency of Serbia. 1948 saw the closing of the association to support the building of Saint Sava, her duties were transferred to the board of the patriarchy. In 1953 all belongings of the association to build Saint Sava were confiscated by the Secretary of the Interior Ministry via the decree 2/3-11.855. Even the existing foundation walls were seized and transferred to the people's property. The decree never arrived at church authorities. Despite this, the church took legal action to counter the nationalisation of its property. In 1962 they were told by the Bureau of Religious Affairs that nationalized property can not be returned to church. After German had been named Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1958, he personally championed the issue. During his term of office it was one of his main concerns to commence with construction. He sent every month a titular bishop to the mayor of Belgrade, to request the removal of garages and all non-religious objects. After this was achieved, 88 requests were sent to various government agencies, who sent him from "pillar to post", from the lowest state agencies to regional authorities, the agencies of