Cross procession in Podgorica, Montenegro: For Christ’s victory
Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro: The voice of the people heard during prayer processions is the voice of God, because the people assembled there have been waiting for a long time to feel free.
“The people have been assembled in peace, first of all to glorify the name of God and to defend their shrines they had received by tradition from their ancestors, demanding that this government renounces the illegal part of the law on Churches and religious communities which has profaned the dignity of Montenegro, the dignity of the Parliament, the dignity of this people”, said His Eminence Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro and the Littoral after a procession that he had been leading through the streets of Podgorica on 21st June 2020.
His Eminence emphasized that those who are now in power "were not elected to use violence against the conscience of Montenegro, against the law and the Constitution, but to do justice, to respect and implement laws, not lawlessness." "If they implement lawlessness, then who is so fool in Montenegro to vote for the one who declares lawlessness to be a law," the Metropolitan noted.
As he said, Europe also demands the initiation of the dialogue between the Church and the state as well as a respect for religious rights in Montenegro:
"Europe has also noticed that there is no such respect. And America has noticed it as well. We stand for a dialogue, we show it constantly. But the dialogue is not for implementing some lawlessness, persistently insisting on that lawlessness and declaring someone as an enemy of the state for not accepting that lawlessness ", he said.
The cross procession was going from the Church of Christ's Resurrection, next to the Old Government building, the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Economics and Dalmatinska Street back to the Church.
Before the procession, a prayer of supplication (acathist) was officiated, and a message of Metropolitan Amfilohije was read, in which the procession participants were invited to comply with the health measures proposed by the Health Institute, and the State Prosecutor's Office and Police Administration, as well as other competent bodies, to behave in accordance to the law before and after the procession,
For the SOC translated into English by Sanja Simic de Graaf
