Head of Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo fired

AP ^ | 2/13/2010

[Tailgunner Joe]

BELGRADE, Serbia - The Serbian Orthodox Church has removed the hardline spiritual leader of Kosovo Serbs on suspicion that he embezzled church and state funds.

The Holy Synod, the church's top body, ruled Saturday that Archbishop Artemije can no longer lead the church in Kosovo, considered the heartland of the church. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008.

Artemije, known for his ultranationalist and anti-Western stands, was investigated by the church for allegedly mishandling millions of euros (dollars) in aid and government funds over several years.

[lexington minuteman 1775]

Wow, he went to the Prosperity Gospel School did he?

[Canedawg]

I admit I get confused with goings-on in that part of the world. I thought the Serbs/Christians were not the anti-western faction, and that it was the Croats/muslims who were the anti-west, ultra-nationalistic group?

Didn’t the US miscalculate when it sided against the Christian Serbs? I may need to brush up on this.

[Tailgunner Joe]

The truth is that we shouldn’t have been on either side. Their conflict had nothing to do with us. Croats are just as Christian as Serbs.

[Canedawg]

Didn’t that war pit muslims against christians, or were the battlelines more complex than that?

[circlecity]

"Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008."

Uhhh, I think it was a bit more involved than that.

[Jacob Kell]

Some cases it was muslims vs. christians, but in others it was roman catholic vs. east orthodox. however, it was all a bunch of ethnic nationalist conflicts, not religious ones., at least mainly.

[Canedawg]

Thanks for the edification.

[Cronos]

The battlelines were/are a lot more complex. Genetically, the Serbs, Bosnians, Croats are all Southern Slavs, while Albanians have Illyrian and Turkish roots (the latter being disputed), which is a separate Indo-European branch.

Linguistically, their language is the same: Serbo-Croat with slight modifications between Serbian, Croat and Bosnian so much that they can at the most truly be considered dialects of each other. Montenegrin and Macedonian are in the dialect spectrum between Serbo-Croat and Bulgarian -- my personal opinion is that the latter language is closer to Bulgarian, FAR more closer

The Albanians of course, speak a different indo-european language.

Religiously, the Serbs were Orthodox, the Croats were Catholics, the Bosnians were mostly muslim or a separate Church, the Bogomils, the Albanians were a mixture -- now mostly muslim but also Catholic (like Mother Teresa) and Orthodox, though the Christian Albanians (like Jim Belushi's family) are from Albania proper not Kosovo.

historically, the land was messed up by the Turkish invasions when the southern slavs were split up into lands controlled by Turks and lands under the Holy Roman imperial crown.

So, it's a complex ehtno-linguistic-religous mix.

[RedDogzRule]

I believe it’s important to note that Kosovo is considered by the Serbian Orthodox to be their spiritual/cultural homeland in the Balkans.