Churches, monasteries and places of worship will not be a problem during the negotiations announced between representatives of the Serbian Orthodox Church, SPC, and the Government of Montenegro. The problem will not be formal registration either, but valuable real estate that has never been used as places of worship or confessionals, but are registered as possessions of the SPC without any legal basis.
Therefore, the main problem for the SPC is urban construction land, meadows and other facilities not used for church ceremonies. This is, in fact, the most valuable property that the Serbian Church in Montenegro is managing without legal basis and does not want to give up, our well-known lawyer, Mr Nikola Martinovic, said in an interview with the weekend edition of Dnevne Novine daily.
He emphasized that the Religious Freedom Law does not define either professing or the organization of a religious community but all of them have a freedom of doing it on their own.
According to him, the registration should not be a problem: “If you ask me, it should not be a problem at all. Let’s just look at the way the Serbian Church solved this same issue in Croatia. They registered in CRO without any problem, and there are 431 various units of the SPC registered in their records. If the SPC stays principled in Montenegro and if it shows behavior it has shown in Croatia, registration will not be a problem. The problem will be with the property. It is clear that the Church will not agree to be deprived of the property they believe to be theirs and that is not primarily intended for worship.”
As for the processions organized by the SPC and his opinion about them, Mr Martinović said: “Current processions are actually protests, demonstrations, that is, the public expression of dissatisfaction. Processions are what churches like to call ‘a church ritual’, but that’s not the case here in Montenegro. But it’s not unusual, as I have already said in our interview, that processions organized by the Serbian Church are organized due to some political events and decisions.”
