Suffering Kosovo monastery unveils English-language website and store

Draganac Monastery of the Holy Archangels Gabriel and Michael, a small monastery in Kosovo and Metohija, has recently unveiled a website in English about the monastery, the local region, and its history and present state. This is the only such website in English, about one of the ancient monasteries now living under Muslim rule in Kosovo.

The site contains a presentation of the young brotherhood, which was re-established in the ancient but abandoned monastery in the 1990s thanks to the efforts of Visoki Dečani Monastery. The abbot is Archimandrite Ilarion, and the brotherhood numbers 12 members, one of the larger monastic communities at present in Kosovo, where the situation for Orthodox Christians is an extremely difficult one. Following the violent attacks and subsequent mass expulsions of the Serbian Orthodox population in 1999 and 2004, Orthodox Christians who remain in Kosovo are mostly forced to live in small, rural, isolated ethnic ghettos, barred from participating in general society, where there are few prospects for employment and the psychological impact of living in prolonged isolation can be crushing. More and more Orthodox Christians continue to be forced to leave Kosovo, and with each one that leaves, the situation becomes all the more difficult for those who remain.