Serbian Orthodox Church

Information Service of
the Serbian Orthodox Church
May 21, 2004

CELEBRATION OF THE ASCENSION OF OUR LORD, THE PATRON SAINT'S DAY OF VISOKI DECANI MONASTERY
"THE MERCHANTS OF SOULS - DOCUMENTATION ON DUKLJAN-MONTENEGRIN RELIGIOUS TRAFFICKING"

CELEBRATION OF THE ASCENSION OF OUR LORD, THE PATRON SAINT'S DAY OF VISOKI DECANI MONASTERY

Visoki Decani Monastery today formally celebrated the monastery patron saint's day of the Ascension of Our Lord (Vaznesenje Gospodnje, also called Spasovdan). Holy Liturgy was served in the presence of more than 300 faithful who arrived from various parts of central Serbia and Kosovo and Metohija under KFOR escort.

Holy Liturgy was served in the presence of the abbot of Decani and newly appointed vicar bishop of Lipljan, Father Teodosije, by Father Petar (Ulemek) and the monks of the Diocese of Raska and Prizren. After Holy Liturgy, the blessing of the slava cake took place.

Attending Holy Liturgy and the festal patron saint's day luncheon in Visoki Decani Monastery were Their Royal Highnesses Princesses Jelisaveta and Linda Karadjordjevic with Prince Mihailo, the son of the late Prince Tomislav. The members of the royal family have spent the last several days visiting Serb refugees in northern Kosovo and Metohija.

"THE MERCHANTS OF SOULS - DOCUMENTATION ON DUKLJAN-MONTENEGRIN RELIGIOUS TRAFFICKING"

Recently the Youth Intellectual Center of Niksic and BONART of Nova Pazova jointly published a compendium of documents called “Trgovci Dusama” (The Merchants of Souls) in connection with the founding of the so-called Montenegrin Church which the current regime in Montenegro approved and documented in the Cetinje police station as the Orthodox church. This act represents the most brutal attack on the name, property and dignity of the age-old Orthodox Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral founded by St. Sava in 1219.

In order to make all readers aware of the most recent attempt to change the spiritual identity of those who consider Montenegro their homeland, authors Budimir Aleksic and Slavko Krstajic limited the book to official documents and correspondence between the Serbian Orthodox Church and other Orthodox churches. They purposely avoided any further explanation further discrediting the lies propagated by Montenegrin separatists.

Adhering to the concept of the so-called Montenegrin Church first introduced by Savic Markovic aka Stedimlija (the proven notorious Montenegrin Ustashe and war criminal who created the present-day Montenegrin separatist movement), his followers today are attempting to deceive the naive and unsophisticated by re-tailoring historical fact and presenting innumerable counterfeits and plagiarisms regarding the existence of the so-called Montenegrin Church.

The core of the separatist movement, the driving force and proponent of the so-called Montenegrin Church is comprised of academicians of the so-called Duklja Academy, false historians, pseudowriters and politicians once educated in the benches of Kumrovec (native village of former Yugoslav president Tito, located in Zagorje, Croatia) where they learned their trade and one of their primary subjects of study was how to destroy or at least inflict damage upon the Serbian Orthodox Church, its hierarchs, clergy and faithful.

They can thank the ignorance and poverty of the jobless masses for the fact they have likeminded people in Montenegro today, some of them ready to give their very lives for their current bosses and their ideas. Attacks on the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral as its inseparable part began in the mid-1980s when the heirs of Stedimlija and Drljevic - Jevrem Brkovic, Branko Nikac, Danilo Radojevic, Radoslav Rotkovic, Vojislava Nikcevic, Rajko Cerovic, Veseljko Koprivica, etc. raced to produce all the more counterfeits and plagiarisms to defile the patrimony of Saint Sava.

In 1990 the aforementioned founded the Council for Recognition of the Autocephalous Montenegrin Church and tried to find an Orthodox priest, first in Montenegro, to realize their dirty task. After enormous sums of money failed to help them, they looked beyond Montenegro and in 1993 they brought elderly Antonio Abramovic, a monk of the American Orthodox Church, which subsequently defrocked him, to Cetinje.

The tenure of the self-proclaimed head of the so-called Montenegrin Church was brief for three years later he died. Just prior to his death, he was joined by Milutin Cvijic, a former monk of Ostrog Monastery who had broken his monastic vows and thus had been barred from officiating at church services. Cvijic found sanctuary with Antonio and the two of them comprised the false hierarchy of the non-existent Montenegrin Church.

After the death of the unfortunate Antonio, newly appointed as head was Miras Dedejic, a former priest of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, who was ordained a priest at the age of 50 and whose life prior to joining the church resembled a work of Charles Bukovski. Aware of Dedejic’s controversiality, there was dissent among the ranks of the Council of Recognition; nevertheless, they appointed him for there was no time to lose and no one knew if they would be able to find someone with suitable personal qualities.

Upon Dedejic’s appointment, Zivorad Pavlovic of Smederevo, a former priest who had stolen 150,000 German marks and 80,000 dinars from the till of the Smederevo parish, also moved to Montenegro. Hence the hierarchy of this merry company from Cetinje is now comprised of two defrocked priests and one defrocked monk.

The collection of documents included in this book will help many uninformed and deceived people in Montenegro and throughout the world learn the historical truth, and it will deprive the ill-intentioned and counterfeiters of historical fact of the ability to continue to spread lies about the allegedly autocephalous Montenegrin Church and stop them from presenting events in the manner most conducive to their ideological and corrupt political (primarily anti-Orthodox and anti-Serbian) obsessions and biases.