Montenegro Challenges Its Church
--
Several hundred people gathered outside Podgorica’s main cathedral on the evening of March 12, as liturgical singing echoed from inside its doors. Two large screens, placed on either side of the entryway into the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ, showed the goings-on inside even as two long queues stretched down the cathedral steps.
Gatherings like this one, followed by a processional march through the city, have become commonplace in the Montenegrin capital. Since December, when the parliament passed a controversial Religious Freedom Law, protests organized primarily by the Serbian Orthodox Church — the country’s largest religious group — have overtaken Podgorica twice a week, drawing up to 6,000 people.
In the words of one young protester, Jovana, 19, “This is our faith and we are supporting it, because this (law) should not have happened.” She declined to give her surname for privacy reasons.
The new law stipulates that religious institutions that cannot prove ownership of their properties prior to 1918 — when Montenegro joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes and became part of Yugoslavia — could have their properties seized by the state.
The happenings in Montenegro are anomalous for several reasons. For one, the protesters are operating despite many unknown factors — it is not yet clear how strictly the law will be enforced or what exactly will happen to the confiscated properties. And the law, if it is enforced, is broad, meaning that it could affect all religious communities in Montenegro. It is telling, then, that only the Serbian Orthodox Church is kicking up a fuss.
“Only the Serbian Orthodox Church perceives the Montenegrin secular state as a threat,” explained Jasmin Mujanović, a political scientist specializing in the Western Balkans.
“For vulnerable minorities, the idea of a secular state seems like a good idea. For them, the idea of separation of church and state seems like a good idea,” he added. For powerful religious communities, however, there is greater incentive to preserve ecclesiastical power over terrestrial authority. Today, approximately 70 percent of Montenegrins identify as Orthodox, the majority of which are followers of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Montenegrin Orthodox Church, reestablished in 1993 as Yugoslavia collapsed, remains unrecognized by other Orthodox churches.
The protestors have mobilized around the idea that, if the government confiscates Serbian Orthodox churches, it will turn them into Montenegrin Orthodox churches. Mujanović cautions that this is unconfirmed, and that it is possible to imagine some properties becoming museums or remaining in the government’s hands.
Vesko Garčević, the former Montenegrin ambassador to NATO, explained in a phone interview that Montenegro’s induction into Yugoslavia merged the Montenegrin Orthodox Church with the Serbian Orthodox Church. Many of the former’s properties became Serbian churches, and remained so even after the reemergence of an independent Montenegrin church in 1993. Garčević, like many supporters of the new law, believes that by potentially returning these properties to their original owner the law is righting a historical wrong.
Mujanović added that while a strong Montenegrin sense of identity has long existed, the accompanying institutional aspects have often lagged behind. The law is an attempt to bridge this gap.
As the square in front of the Podgorica cathedral continued to fill, spectators hoisted Montenegrin and Serbian flags and banners painted with saints. Some followed along with the service, ritually crossing themselves at precise moments, while others held up their pinched fingers in the Orthodox sign of the cross and clicked selfies. The image on the screens, at one point, lingered on a little girl dressed head-to-toe in pink and holding an icon of a saint.
Like many of the protestors, Zoran, 48, was confident the protests would lead to the withdrawal of the law. The protests, he said, would last as long as necessary. He declined to provide his surname.
Other protestors denounced the idea of government ownership of religious properties.
An elderly woman of 75, asked to be identified as B.D., decried the corruption of the Montenegrin state and the idea that the church’s properties should be placed in its hands.
“Our government has destroyed everything, this is all we have left,” she said. “May god help us.”
It is true that allegations of corruption have long followed both the Serbian Orthodox Church and the government of President Milo Đukanović.
For Garčević, the former can be seen as often having operated as a state within the state. There is also a strong sense of irony accompanying the current situation in Montenegro. The Serbian Orthodox Church did not follow the same ownership policy in Serbia that it did in Montenegro; the main cathedral in Belgrade, St. Sava, is state-owned, according to Garčević.
“The Serbian church was very powerful, politically powerful, and was somehow out of the system. They didn’t pay taxes. They own the land.” said Garčević. “They enjoy the privilege status (sic) compared to other religious communities in Montenegro.”
Misgivings about President Đukanović are also common — he has been in power for nearly 30 years, alternatively the country’s president, its prime minister, or the head of its leading political party.
There are “very serious concerns about the quality of democracy in Montenegro,” said Mujanović.
“At this point, it’s still kind of Đukanovic featuring Montenegro,” he joked.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ongoing church protests have become a gathering place for many Serbian nationalists, who feel that they have vested interests in Montenegro; like Kosovo, the country is rife with historic monuments and sacred sites important to the Serbian Orthodox Church. The protests are the most recent debacle in Serbia and Montenegro’s fraught relationship, which has declined steadily since Montenegro gained independence from Serbia in 2006 and adopted a strong sovereigntist bend to its politics.
This has not sat well with Serbia and its church, which have largely disapproved of the independent political stance Montenegro has taken in recent years, most significantly its recognition of Kosovo and its enthusiastic pursuit of NATO membership, according to Mujanović.
As a result, Serbian nationalists have adopted a narrative that has been deployed liberally throughout the Western Balkans — that Montenegrins are really just Serbs in disguise. This line is often repeated by church leaders; at another gathering in March, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro, Metropolitan Amfilohije, told spectators that if they rubbed a Montenegrin with bleach he would become a Serb.
At St. George’s Church in Podgorica — the city’s oldest church — priests dressed in embroidered dark robes mill about the gardens, conversing with each other and with churchgoers who have seemingly come to seek advice.
One, Father Vladimir, sporting dark aviator Ray Bans, is defensive when asked about the law, preferring to ask me my opinion of it, whether I go to church and how often, and mulling over my name (I am Bosnian by origin). Eventually he conceded, decrying the law as “unusable” and regressive.
Anxieties about the law are nearly as rife as the unanswered questions surrounding it.
Montenegro has national elections scheduled for October, and it’s unclear what effect the protests might have. According to Mujanović, it is possible that some Montenegrin adherents of the Serbian Orthodox Church might be won over by Serb opposition parties.
“It’s certainly the case that there are a lot of people who identify with that church but also have been traditionally supporters of Montenegrin independence and Mr. Dukanovic,” Mujanović said.
“And in the past, I think that juggling act, that balancing act, seemed viable, because those two identities essentially were not in conflict. Now that they’re in conflict, it’s an open question as to, you know, to whom they essentially espouse greater loyalty to.”
For Mujanović, legal questions remain about the viability of contesting property transfers that occurred during the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, a state that not only no longer exists, but whose immediate successors have also since dissolved.
Moreover, it is unclear how the law will be enforced or what will happen to confiscated properties, and there also does not seem to be a definite answer as to how many, or which, properties lack the requisite paperwork. Mujanović added that it is entirely possible that the oldest Serbian monasteries in the country — like the revered cliffside Ostrog Monastery — have no paperwork at all. The possibility of confiscating such iconic properties, to some, threatens the church’s power, and to others, signals a strengthening of Montenegro’s sovereignty.
“I’m just waiting for somebody to ask where’s the apostle stamp on the deed to Ostrog?” Mujanović said.
