NEWS FEATURE: Montenegro’s Breakaway Orthodox Church Leads Independence Movement

c. 2000 Religion News Service CETINJE, Yugoslavia _ A successful independence movement absolutely requires political brains and some brawn. But it helps, too, to have God on your side, to have a spiritual rationale for temporal claims. In the case of the tiny republic of Montenegro, Serbia’s last remaining partner in Yugoslavia, the capital city […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

CETINJE, Yugoslavia _ A successful independence movement absolutely requires political brains and some brawn. But it helps, too, to have God on your side, to have a spiritual rationale for temporal claims.

In the case of the tiny republic of Montenegro, Serbia’s last remaining partner in Yugoslavia, the capital city of Podgorica is home to the pro-independence politicians who control the republic’s special police units and verbally spar with Serb leaders.


The soul of the independence movement, however, is located here in Cetinje.

This sleepy mountain town of 20,000 residents is home to the tiny Montenegrin Orthodox Church, which has steadily gained recognition and quiet support from secular authorities in the last year. At the same time, the upstart church is roundly condemned as a fraud and lacking “God’s grace” by Orthodox leaders from Belgrade to Constantinople to Moscow.

From the Montenegrin Orthodox Church’s office, a whitewashed, three-story building bought with $50,000 donated by local businessmen, members of the tiny religious community can clearly hear the peal of bells of a majestic, hillside monastery of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

“They can hear our bells, too,” said the Montenegrin church’s prelate, Metropolitan Mihailo Dedeic, who has been defrocked, excommunicated and anathematized by mainstream Orthodoxy.

Mihailo, a 62-year-old former parish priest with a regal manner, flowing white beard and red cheeks, soon expects the monastery’s bells to grow much louder. “This is only our headquarters until we move into the monastery,” he says, referring to it as “occupied.” “We are hoping to do it very quickly. Maybe it could happen this year.”

Metropolitan Mihailo, in fact, would like to seize wholesale the Serbian Orthodox Church’s estimated 650 churches and monasteries in Montenegro.

Pro-independence Montenegrin politicians also support such a transfer. To date, Mihailo says he has physically taken over 23 church buildings, sometimes with the support of local anti-Belgrade police.

From Mihailo’s office and residence, a brisk, 10-minute walk down a narrow road brings you to the walls of the majestic Cetinje Monastery, the seat of Metropolitan Amfilohije Radovic, one of the leading lights of the 8 million member, 800-year-old Serbian Orthodox Church based in Belgrade.


Stung by coverage in the local and international press, the metropolitan doesn’t give interviews about the clash with Mihailo. Monks under him, however, rebut each of Mihailo’s arguments and wage a vigorous defense on the Internet (http://www.mitropolija.cg.yu).

In a series of statements released over the course of the last year, the monks accuse Mihailo’s upstart church of using threats and violence to take control of parish churches in Montenegro. They document one case in Cetinje where a monk on his way to the post office was nearly run down by a car driven by a Mihailo supporter.

Mihailo denies using violence in his drive to take over the Cetinje Monastery, which claims the right hand of John the Baptist and a piece of Jesus’ cross among its relics.

In a written statement, Amfilohije’s deputy, Bishop Joanikije Micovic warned that if the government continued to recognize the Montenegrin Orthodox Church and tacitly sanction its seizure of parish churches, “this would then turn into a kind of madness and it would definitely cause a state of chaos.”

For Orthodox believers in Montenegro, the most important issue in the dispute is whether Mihailo’s church is canonical _ legitimate. In the Orthodox world, the primary arbiter on such questions is the Ecumenical Patriarchate, based in Istanbul, Turkey.

In a written response to questions about Mihailo’s church, Metropolitan Meliton Karas, chief secretary of the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s Holy and Sacred Synod, wrote that the anathematized Mihailo “is no longer a member of the clergy of the Orthodox Church,” was “noncanonically” elevated to bishop and then “proclaimed himself the leader of the non-existent Church of Montenegro.”


From this point of view, Mihailo’s church sacraments like baptism are robbed of their validity and God’s grace. In terms of achieving the everlasting life promised in the Christian Bible, it means, as one Cetinje Monastery monk explained, “Yes, you can achieve salvation outside the Orthodox church. But it is the difference between being in the room and looking through the keyhole.”

Mihailo defends his legitimacy, saying that his defrocking was “politically” motivated.

Ultimately, Montenegrin politics will likely determine which church prevails.

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The future of Montenegro’s independence movement and Mihailo’s church looks considerably grimmer with the ouster last month of atheist Slobodan Milosevic as Yugoslav president and the inauguration of the more moderate Vojislav Kostunica, a practicing member of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Less than two weeks after his inauguration, Kostunica came to the Cetinje Monastery and met for nearly two hours with Metropolitan Amfilohije. In earlier meetings with the Montenegrin president, Kostunica promised to work to redefine the relationship between Montenegro’s 650,000 residents and Serbia with its population of 8 million. But there is still a long way to go.

Montenegro’s government, for example, opts to use the German mark instead of the Yugoslav dinar. Serbia, in turn, is economically blockading Montenegro.

Despite the easing of tensions between Montenegro and Serbia, Metropolitan Mihailo said earlier this month that Montenegrins should push ahead for complete independence from Belgrade.

One of Mihailo’s staunchest supporters, Montenegrin parliament member Miodrag Ilickovic, sat in Mihailo’s office and explained why the state must intervene and transfer all Orthodox property to the Montenegrin Orthodox Church.


“I think it is a political question,” said Ilickovic, vice president of the Social Democratic Party of Montenegro. “An independent government has an independent church.”

Ilickovic predicted that, for the time being, there would be plenty of church property to go around and cited the example of the 40 people living in his native village served by “two churches and one monastery.”

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Little attention has been paid to the Montenegrin conflict outside Yugoslavia or the confines of Orthodox hierarchies. International ecumenical organizations have been loathe to intervene. The World Council of Churches’ Europe Secretary, Alexander Belopopsky, said by telephone from Geneva, “The WCC cannot and will not be a judge of canonicity.”

In his personal opinion, Belopopsky said Mihailo’s church, “is really not very representative and is really quite marginal.” Kostunica’s election and closeness to Serbian Orthodox Church Patriarch Pavle I, bode well for the Serbian church in Montenegro, he said.

“Bishop Amfilohije’s hand is strengthened because he is close to Patriarch Pavle,” Belopopsky said.

Final judgment in the matter, one Cetinje Monastery monk observed, rests with God. The stakes may be high, he noted, given St. Petar (cq) of Cetinje’s call for “the flesh to fall from the bones” of those who would separate the people of Montenegro from the church.

DEA END BROWN

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