Russian Bishop says “montenegrin” church illegitimate

Russia’s Orthodox Bishop Ilarion says that Montenegro is “multi-confessional” state in which the majority is of the Orthodox Christian faith and that the only legitimate Orthodox Christian church there is the Serbian Orthodox Church.

“In Montenegro there is a canonical church to which belongs the majority of the Orthodox people and a small group of self declared that seek to portray themselves that they are an orthodox church. With respect of canonical right, there cannot be two orthodox churches in one territory,” said Russia’s Bishop Ilarion.

The authorities in Montenegro today are attempting to remove the Serbian Bishop Amfilohije from his legitimate position so that they can replace the orthodox church with a self-proclaimed schismatic claming he belongs to a “nonexistent” so-called “montenegrin” orthodox church thus claiming that, as communists argued, the so-called “montenegrin” nation allegedly exists.

In a recent Montenegro state “census”, thousands of Serbs were nixed by the authorities claiming that Serbs there either declared themselves as not Serbs or that Serbs declared themselves that they do not speak Serbian even though the “montenegrin” language is the crown of Serbian literacy booked by Montenegro King Njegosh.

Ilarion, pictured on the left with the Serbian Orthodox Patriarch, said that it is impossible to create a new church every time when a new state is formed because, he says, in that case, there would be 150 Orthodox Churches and not 15.

Some “montenegrins” believe that they are an allegedly separate ethnic group from Serbs even though their state was the only remaining Serbian political unit during half of century under Muslim enslavement of Christian Serbs.

Ilarion said that authorities are dividing the people and that “instead of uniting them, they are dividing. Today they do not know what to do with that division, how to unite that separated people,” Ilarion said about the similar case of Ukraine where schismatic separated that church.

Ilarion said that the Church is catholic and as such it is above the nationality and it does not divide.

Analysts say that politics in Montenegro are led by the strongman Milo Djukanovic who has been battling Italian mafia indictments for smuggling drugs and other contraband.

An analyst says to me that the reason Montenegro has gone anti-Serb is because Djukanovic has gotten Washington support to get out of the mafia indictments in exchange for an anti-Serb policy in that country because Washington supports anyone who deems Serbs, as one analyst told me, bunch of “Jews who hadn’t been soaped” during WWII.

If a Serb like me, it sure is scary to even declare your self as such.