Montenegrin PM on Serbian Church Property

Montenegrin Prime Minister Igor Lukšić

1/1/2011

PODGORICA — New Montenegrin Prime Minister Igor Lukšić has said that he would initiate a dialogue regarding assets of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) in Montenegro.

He said that, although he himself was not a believer, in his capacity as the prime minister, he would “help make some radical forms of highlighting the marginalized problem”.

According to him, a solution to the problem would come more easily if those who wanted to talk came to the fore.

Lukšić admitted that the resolving the SPC property issue would be difficult and that it would take quite a while to resolve the matter, but he believes, though, that a great insistence could lead to solutions.

“All of us need to give up on something and realize that this should be done, above all, for the interests of generations to come,” he said in a statement for the Podgorica-based daily Pobjeda.

The problem related to the assets of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro, or the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral, is present virtually since the establishment of the canonically unrecognized Montenegrin Orthodox Church, and especially since Montenegro gained independence in May 2006.

In 2007, the Cetinje branch of the real estate administration decided that the SPC Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral was no longer the owner of Church land and buildings in the municipality of Cetinje, and that the ownership of these was under individual churches and monasteries.

Metropolitan Amfilohije then urged the Montenegrin President Filip Vujanović and the then Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic to provide legal and property security for the Metropolitanate in order that, as he then said, civil peace could be preserved. Based on the Metropolitanate’s appeal, the decision from Cetinje was revoked.

Following the 2007 dispute with the state of Montenegro, the Metropolitanate won another one when the court from the coastal town of Kotor issued a decision, which came to many as a surprise, that the municipality of Budva should return 4,600 square meters which were taken away from the SPC because of a construction of detours 20 years ago.

The value of the land is estimated at EUR 2.6mn.

The Metropolitanate is registered in the Kotor cadastre as the owner or user of about 600 Orthodox churches in Montenegro, and this was just one of more than 120 disputes that the SPC wages against the state.

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