by Adil Fetahu

(First come the priests , then the guns, then the thieves: Gjorgje Balaš-evic)

The Serbs, as a barbarian and pagan people, irreligious and destructive, adopted Christianity in the second half of the 6th-9th centuries, after they came to Illyricum, in the area ruled by Emperor Justinian. Due to the great schism, in 1054 Christianity split into two directions: the Western (Latin) and the Eastern (Orthodox).

The Serbian Church was in the ranks of the Orthodox Church, under the Bulgarian and Greek Churches. The Serbian Church gained independence (autocephaly) during the reign of the Nemanjićs. Stefan Nemanjić’s brother, Archimandrite Rastko, in 1219 asked the Patriarch Vassal (in Nicaea) and the then king of Byzantium to allow the independence of the Serbian Church.

This was granted (on December 6 of that year) and Rastko was appointed archbishop, and took the (ecclesiastical) name Sava. The Nemanjićs won this autonomy of the Serbian church by giving a horse burden to the ducats.

Because Sava was from the family of Serbian rulers of the Nemanjićs, and had ensured the independence of the church, a cult of Sava was created in Serbian ecclesiastical and political circles and he was later declared a saint, while his theoretical and practical interpretations, in more recent times, declared him “Svetosavlje”, a term that is widely used by the Serbian church and politics.

The Serbian church has so far canonized, declared and registered in the book of saints (“Diptik”) 114 saints, of whom 7 are women. This year (May 10, 2018) it has declared three people from Kosovo as saints (two men from Peja and one woman from Pasjan in Gjilan).

The theory (“Svetosavlje”) was developed by the most extreme bishops of the Serbian church: Nikolaje Velimirović, Atanasije Jevtić, Justin Popović, Dimitrije Bogdanović, etc. The clergy who follow this theory, and they are the most numerous, are called “nikollajevici” and “justinovci”. “Svetosavlje” or “pravoslavlje”, is a philosophy, a supposedly spiritual orientation of the church and private life of the Serbian people, but in reality this is a purely nationalist, Serbo-majority ideology, it is a clerico-fascist national ideology and policy, stripped of the values ​​and teachings of Christianity.

It is contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ which are based on love, peace, selflessness, forgiveness, mercy for all and unconditionally. Svetosavlje is not based on belief in God, but rather on belief in the state, according to the principle: “God in heaven, king on earth, master of the house in the family”. It is an amalgam of Serbian nationalism and clericalism.

The Serbian Church, with myths, megalomania, lies and half-truths, with goals and claims of conquering foreign lands, educates, educates and feeds the masses with hatred against other nations and faiths, with claims to create a Greater Serbia, of the time of Dušan. Svetosavlje is also proven anti-Semitism. The ideologist of this “religious” orientation, the second man after Saint Sava, Bishop Nikolaje Velimirović, was a proven anti-Semite, who worshipped and glorified Adolf Hitler.

When he was Bishop of Ohrid, he had arranged the cemeteries of German soldiers who fell in the First World War. For this merit he received a first-class decoration from Nazi Germany (1934). In 1935, Nikolaje published an article (“The Nationalism of Saint Sava”), in which he praised Hitler, comparing him to his own Saint Sava, and he did this for his merits in reviving nationalism.

Among other things, he says about Hitler: “Respect must be expressed to the current German leader, who has noticed that nationalism without faith (religion) is an anomaly, it is a cold and unreliable mechanism. And here, he (Hitler, vj), in the 20th century came to the idea of ​​Saint Sava and did the work that befits only a saint, a genius and a hero. For us (Serbs, vj) this work was done, 700 years ago, by Saint Sava, the first among saints, geniuses and heroes”!

With this, the bishop was alluding to the persecution of the Jews, which Hitler had begun in 1934. Because, Nikolaje blamed the Jews for the crucifixion of Christ and for all the bad vices that had gripped Europe. This “prelate” of the SOS fled to America after World War II, because he was accused of crimes committed during the war. But, with the new regime in Serbia, in May 1991, they brought his remains from America and buried them with religious and political ceremonies in the church of St. Sava, in Vračar (Belgrade), while in 2003 they declared him a saint!

Yes, this cannot surprise those who know the policy followed by the SOS,which over the last 200 years has supported all the aggressive and occupying wars that Serbia has waged. Of the 114 saints that this church has proclaimed, many of them are known for the monstrous crimes they have committed, even those who have killed their own brother or other relative, to seize power, and others who have committed crimes in times of war and peace. Miroslav Qosović, in his book “Bizarre Saints of the Serbian Church” (Bizarre Saints of the Serbian Church), has identified by name and surname Serbian criminals, from among the clergy or in power, who have been declared saints.

The position of SOC in different regimes

In the Middle Ages, the position and role of the Serbian Orthodox Church fluctuated, depending on whose occupation it was under, but it was always dominated by Greek and Bulgarian bishops and priests, in whose language the sermon and church services were held. Even under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, the SOC enjoyed numerous privileges. The Ottoman Empire was a large empire, within which there were many peoples (“millets”) of different faiths.

In order to maintain peace, it had created special relations according to the millets to which they belonged, allowing the regulation of religious relations, and within them also of civil relations, private and public, family and hereditary, and even civil courts within the church, which could judge in relations with the “king”.

During that period, the church played the role of the main political, educational, cultural and every other national institution, in preserving the unity and identity of the peoples, and this ecclesiastical freedom was also used to prepare uprisings and the war against the Ottoman government in favorable circumstances, until liberation after the First World War.

With the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (1918), later called the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, after World War I, the Serbian Orthodox Church was greatly strengthened, as in 1920 it united all the Orthodox churches of the entire territory of the new state, in which the church gained the status of the state church, great privileges and wealth.

It was also legally recognized as a state-forming organization and cooperated closely with the state and with extreme right-wing nationalist and terrorist organizations, such as “Sokoli”, “Skauti”, “Crna ruka”, “Narodna odbrana”, “Četnici”, etc. In 1924, the church transferred its headquarters to the Patriarchate of Peja.

After World War II, in Tito’s Yugoslavia, the role of the KOS was marginalized, because with the first Constitution of the state (1946), the church was separated from the state, the school was separated from the church, the teaching of religion was removed from schools, the Faculty of Theology was separated from the University (of Belgrade).

Religious communities were guaranteed freedom of preaching, but without daring to interfere in state affairs. Family matters, marriages, inheritance, etc., passed into the competence of the government bodies. Changes were also made in limiting the property of religious communities. But, despite the marginalization of its role, the KOS has always worked and “dug from within”, preserving and cultivating its nationalist tradition, and thus was akin to opposition to the Communist Party and the party state that it was.

Kosovo has always been in the spotlight, with all the old and new myths, with the lies about injustices, violence, rapes, pressures, displacements of Serbs. The most vocal and the most liar in this regard was Bishop Pavle, who served for 34 years as bishop in the Raska-Prizren diocese (in Kosovo), until, “with a hundred” tricks, in December 1990 he was elected patriarch, even though the other patriarch (German) was still alive, but Pavle was rewarded for the merits created with the lies he had spread from Kosovo.

His merit is also the church building built on the campus of the University of Pristina, which still stands there today, as a monument to shame. Bishop Artemije, who replaced Pavle, does not give way to his “subversive” church activity, until an internal church scandal broke out and he was expelled.

Other, second-rate priests were diligent workers in fabricating, collecting and sending information and false reports to the Goebbelsian propaganda processing center, from where they were distributed and repeated through the media. In this way, the church created and spread hatred against the Albanian people, but also against the Bosnian and Croatian people, as well as against the Muslim and Catholic faiths.

The warmongering role of the SOC in the last war

After Tito’s death (1980), the Serbian Orthodox Church returned furiously to the public, media and political scene. It began by organizing various manifestations, with the aim of homogenizing the masses of the people. In the “Sabor”, the tribune, the round table, in the media, it expressed its views on various social and political issues. Several new theologians appeared, who lamented and propagated the difficult position of the Serbs in Kosovo, but also in Bosnia and Croatia.

They compared the position of the Serbs to that of the Jews in Germany during the Nazi era! In a “Sabor” held in Kosovo (1987), for the first time the church used the term genocide, allegedly being committed against the Serbs in Kosovo.

In April of that year, a delegation of the SOC visited the American Congress, to which it presented a report, full of lies and half-truths about the situation and the “difficult” position of the Serbs in Kosovo. From 1987 to 1998, the KOS held four “Councils” in Kosovo, at which it made decisions and positions and developed church, political and media propaganda for alleged violence against Serbs.

To achieve success in its goals, the KOS cooperated closely with the Serbian Academy of Sciences, the Serbian Writers’ Association, the most extreme political parties, various associations and organizations, but also with people in power, who were increasingly approaching the church.

The ethnic charter adopted at the “Serbian Parliament” (1981) organized by the Serbian Socialist Party together with other elites, and the Memorandum of that Academy (1986), became a guide for the action of all structures of Serbian society committed to the idea of ​​Greater Serbia. Members of the Academy participated in Church gatherings, and vice versa: the church bishops cooperated with the Academy, and some bishops even became members of the Serbian Writers’ Association!

Complementing each other, they became the creators of the war for Greater Serbia, which erupted with aggression in Bosnia, Croatia and finally “broke its neck” in Kosovo. In these wars, the Serbian Orthodox Church played the most negative role that a supposedly ecclesiastical and religious organization could play, starting from Patriarch Pavle down to the lowest level of church personnel. Not all of them, of course, but most of them, and especially most of the highest ecclesiastical level, such as Patriarch Pavle, and his successor, Irinej, and bishops Amfilohije Radović, Irinej Bullović, Atanasije Jevtić, Artemije Radosavljević, etc.

The Serbian Church never raised its voice against the war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed by Serbian soldiers in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. It did not raise its voice against the destruction committed by Serbian forces, not even against the destruction of religious objects: mosques and Catholic churches. In Bosnia, 1,600 mosques and 500 Catholic churches were destroyed.

In Kosovo, 218 mosques and not a single Serbian church or monastery were destroyed. But the Serbian Church never judged the destroyers of mosques and Catholic churches. On the contrary, it supported the war, blessed and supported the bloodiest criminals. There were members of the Serbian Orthodox Church who actively participated in the war and in the commission of crimes.

The head of the Serbian Church, either himself or through his bishops, encouraged and encouraged the war, saying that all territory conquered in war remains with the winner. “Where Serbian blood is shed and Serbian bones remain, it must be Serbian land” (Bishop Nikanor, “Boba, April 3, 1991). At political rallies in Bosnia, they were in the front rows, while Patriarch Pavle blessed Karadzic, Mladic, Kolevici, Plavsicka, Arkan, and other criminals “who were defending the Serbian people”!

Later, Pavle said the sentence that will be remembered: “Budimo ljudi, iako smo srbi” (Let us become people, even though we are Serbs), but Bishop Amfilohije said: “If the people are tired of the war, the church is not tired”! The Metropolitan of Montenegro, Amfilohije, in June 1991 had transformed the Cetinje Monastery into a barracks for paramilitaries led by Arkan.

The Metropolitan himself went to Dubrovnik to encourage the criminals, while Arkan from there declared: “My commander is Patriarch Pavle”!. The media of the past has long published the first photograph of the protosinger Fillaret Mičević, with a machine gun in his hand, wearing a church veil and riding a tank, when he went to war with the Serbian volunteers (August 1991). This image was criticized by the bishop of Bačka, Irinej Bullović.

The Serbian Church has opposed any peace agreement, saying that no agreement is valid that has not been agreed to by the entire Serbian people, and without the blessing of the SOK. Inciting war, the newspaper “Pravoslavlje” (March 15, 1992) wrote: “Not every peace is good, nor is every war bad.”

The SOK Council (May 1996) decided that “Regardless of the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the Serbian Church will continue to extend itself to all Orthodox churches” (it still does not recognize the independence of the Macedonian and Montenegrin churches).

When the war broke out in Kosovo (1998), the KOS Sabor ordered the Serbs: “Do not abandon Kosovo and Metohija, because this would be the greatest betrayal of the high and eternal ideals for which Prince Lazarus fought and sacrificed…”, while Patriarch Pavle said: “Whoever goes to war to protect his own people has God’s reward.”

Thus, the Serbian church encouraged, blessed, and supported war, murder, destruction, crimes, and criminals, which is contrary to all the principles of Christianity. But when they saw that they had lost the last war in Kosovo, the Holy Synod of Bishops, on June 15, 1999, came out with a request that President S. Milosevic and the government resign.