Macedonia’s Renegade Orthodox Bishop Arrested

SKOPJE, Macedonia--Macedonian authorities on 11 January arrested renegade Orthodox Bishop Jovan after police raided his apartment, where he had been holding secret Sunday masses with monks and nuns loyal to the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC).

Bishop Jovan has recently been at the center of a 40-year dispute between the Macedonian Orthodox Church (MPC) and the SPC. He is accused of holding illegal religious services on non-church land and has been formally charged with inciting ethnic, religious, and racial hatred.

Police also arrested seven monks and nuns and four other priests involved in the unsanctioned masses. Three of the detained monks are heads of MPC monasteries.

Interior Ministry spokesperson Mirjana Konteska said police raided the apartment in the middle of a liturgy after receiving anonymous complaints from citizens that Jovan was disturbing the peace and posing a threat to national security. Konteska said police had a warrant for the raid.

Police also helped MPC priests regain control of some monasteries in the hands of monks allied to Jovan.

The MPC had defrocked Jovan--whose given name is Zoran Vraniskovski--in July 2002 for planning to establish canonical relations between his diocese and the SPC.

The SPC and other major Orthodox churches, including the Russian and Greek Orthodox churches, consider the MPC, which declared its independence in 1967, schismatic and do not recognize its autonomy. Macedonia insists its Lake Ohrid region was an ancient cradle of Orthodox Christianity and that the Serbian church is a daughter of the Macedonian church, rather than vice versa.

Last year, the SPC declared Macedonia an administrative district, which it named the Ohrid Archbishopric, and established its own ruling body, a synod led by Bishop Jovan and two other priests.

“As individuals they have the right to go where they want. But the churches and monasteries remain with us. No one has the right to join them to another church. Our bishops will take steps and we expect [those affiliated with Jovan] to be expelled,” said MPC spokesperson Bishop Timotej.

“All the churches and monasteries in the Republic of Macedonia are part of the MPC,” Bishop Timotej said.

At a meeting in the Serbian city of Nis in May 2002, SPC officials asked their Macedonian counterparts to sign an agreement according to which the MPC would be downgraded from autocephalous to autonomous and renamed the Ohrid Archbishopric. The offer was rejected, not least because of Macedonians’ desire to have the word “Macedonian” included in the name of the church they consider theirs.

At that time, Jovan was the only Macedonian bishop who did not withdraw his support for the Nis Declaration. But Jovan soon earned himself the label of renegade, taking his support for the declaration too far in the eyes of the MPC. In fact, he entered into a canonical union with SPC and, during his masses, called on all MPC officials to follow his lead. By the time of his arrest, he had taken over four MPC monasteries.

In July 2002, the MPC stripped Jovan of his rank. He was later tried and found guilty on corruption charges. He received a suspended sentence of one year in prison.

In 2003, the SPC promoted Jovan as the exarch, or head, of the Ohrid Archbishopric. The SPC granted the Ohrid Archbishopric autonomy and jurisdiction within the borders of the Republic of Macedonia.

The MPC had largely ignored Jovan until his 11 January arrest. He had failed to attract many followers among Macedonia's Orthodox worshippers, who have strong connections to the MPC and view it as their national church. But his recent success in winning over key monks and, in effect, taking over key monasteries, had recently begun to worry MPC officials and Macedonian authorities.

The MPC is one of five churches mentioned in the Macedonian Constitution. The Macedonian law forbids the existence of two church authorities for one religious faith.

On 12 January, the day after Jovan's arrest, the MPC, assisted by local police, entered two monasteries in Skopje and nearby Resen. The monks from those two monasteries had all left the MPC and joined Jovan's Ohrid Archbishopric.

The MPC appointed new monastery heads and formed commissions to inspect whether any of the monasteries' belongings had been stolen by the renegade monks. A day later, police and MPC officials raided Treskavec, a difficult-to-reach monastery located on a hill overlooking the city of Prilep.

Fathers David and Maxim, the leaders of the renegade monks, accused police of mental torture during the 30 hours they spent in detention. The monks said that they had gone over to Jovan’s side when it became clear that the “MPC synods had not succeeded in reaching a solution for the church's recognition by the rest of the Orthodox ecumena.”

They also accused the Macedonian bishops of corruption and warned that more than half of the monks would follow in their footsteps.

The MPC immediately began the process of stripping the renegade monks of their rank.

While the Serbian Orthodox Church has denounced Jovan's arrest, comparing it with the persecution of early Christians and demanding an explanation from Macedonian authorities, the government of Macedonia last week expressed its full support for the MPC. It said that the MPC's independence is vital to the country’s strategic interests.

The opposition Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization-Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE) demanded that the Macedonian Parliament issue a special declaration of support for the MPC.

During a 16 January visit to Podgorica, Montenegro, Macedonian Prime Minister Branko Crvenkovski said: “The MPC has the full support of the entire Orthodox population in Macedonia. The future of the churches is in cooperation and dialogue, not in conflict.”

The head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Pavle, sent a letter to Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski asking him to release Jovan and to stop the “religious terror” in Macedonia. Patriarch Pavle expressed willingness to send a negotiating team to Macedonia to resolve the problems between the churches.

After meeting with MPC Archbishop Stefan, President Trajkovski responded to the patriarch’s letter, saying he would be “very happy if the churches negotiate and solve the problem by recognizing the MPC.” Trajkovski said he could not, however, “interfere in the investigative process.”

Amnesty International has also demanded Jovan's release. Legally, Jovan can only be held for 30 days. The investigating judge is scheduled to decide whether Jovan will be released on 22 January.

I was just thinking they were two different people. :-)

I will tell you that the Bishop Jovan we knew here was an incredibly pious and honorable man. Many in other churches here in Seattle were in awe of his extreme humility. He was the person I once asked if I should have the kids baptized. That pic of him is an older one,btw. But he is a lovely and very holy man and a worthy bishop to be sure, radiating a very Christlike persona each time I saw him on his visits here. They said he had entered a monastery at something like age ten, and was incredibly bound to Christ.

Found this on a google search.

"Letter from Belgrade and Novi Sad Scraps from Spyros Payiatakis report in E-Kathimerini, 30 September 2002

During my stay in Belgrade last week, on Tuesday, September 24 precisely, the permanent synod of the Church of Serbia took a most important decision: to appoint as exarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church Bishop Jovan of Veles, in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM).

Last July, Bishop Jovan, who has a black belt in karate and is based in Bitola in FYROM, was deposed by the country’s — schismatic to us — “Macedonian” Orthodox Church as a result of his attempt to have his bishopric join the Serbian Orthodox Church, an action wholeheartedly accepted by us.

He was also accused of having been “incited” by the Greek Orthodox Church and was moreover criticized for his frequent visits to Thessaloniki, where he is studying for his doctorate at the Aristotle University.

As far as I was concerned, Bishop Irenaios, of Vojvodina, speaking in perfect Greek, helped that understanding by his calm, lucid and dispassionate account of an issue that has long been a contentious issue: the status of the “Macedonian” church. This is a dispute that is becoming acrimonious again.

I visited him last Wednesday in the ornate archbishop’s palace in Novi Sad, a city which hosts the two principal Christian churches: Serb Orthodox and Roman Catholic.

Encouraged by the communist authorities, the church in “Macedonia” unilaterally declared itself autocephalous in 1967. It had not previously enjoyed autonomous status within the Serbian church, he said.

The other side, the bishops of FYROM, that is, retort: “This autocephalous church has existed, first in Prespes and then in Ohrid, since the time of Tsar Samuel and his descendants as the spiritual institution of that empire. It was legally strengthened by the Byzantine Emperor Basil II as an ecumenical Christian institution immediately after his defeat of Samuel’s state in 1018.”

They also insist “in the 20th century, during the period of the World War II and the course of the military actions of the struggle for Macedonian statehood, the Macedonians raised the question of an autocephalous church. Since the representatives of the Serbian Orthodox Church were attempting to postpone the solution of the Macedonian Church question, the delegates to the second Church-and-People Assembly, held in Ohrid on October 4 and 5, 1958, passed a decision in favor of the revival of the archbishopric of Ohrid and of the constitution of the ‘Macedonian’ Orthodox Church. ’

Now, everyone knows that in Tito’s time, no church, or anyone else, could take such a decision by itself, unless there was a clear political reason — in this case, the formation of a “Macedonian” state.

“I know Bishop Jovan well. He is a good man and I am convinced that his decision was based solely on theology,” Archbishop Irenaios said.

Last summer Bishop Jovan, stated: “Some are accusing me of national treason and that may be so, but as a bishop of the holy church I cannot place national interests before spiritual ones. While the church may recognize a nation, that always comes second.”

In 2000, Bishop Jovan was removed from the Bregalnica diocese in FYROM after his inflexible attitude to ritual and his insistence on conducting part of the liturgy in Greek upset local faithfuls.

No, they are not the same man. Sorry about that!

This is the man currently involved in the situation in FYROM:

Bishop Jovan, who has a black belt in karate, attended the Thessalonika Faculty of Theology. He was immediately made a bishop in the Macedonian church after his return from Greece in 1996 and maintains close relations with a number of eminent Greek theologians. He is currently writing a PhD thesis on the question of autonomous and autocephalous status within the Orthodox canon.

This is the Bishop Jovan that you know:

He completed elementary school in the village. At eleven years of age, he went to Monastery Klisura where he spent ten months. Thereafter he went to Monastery Studenica where he spent the next thirty years from 1963 to 1993. He grew up next to the holy relics of the Studenica saints and under the wise tutelage of Father Julijan and Father Simeon.
In 1967, he attended the first post-war theological seminary at Monastery Ostrog from which he graduated in 1969. He was inducted and completed the military service.

Clearly, two different men.

As to the reason why the Serbian Church will not accept this is because the division originated from Tito's Communist Party and involved church hierarch's who's main loyalties may have been with Tito and not Christ's Church. Those supporting the separation (recognized as a schism by the other Orthodox Patriarchates) are clearly motivated by nationalism above all else. Sooner or later, they will realize that you cannot be Orthodox while being out of Communion with every other Orthodox Church. Just another "relic" of Communism that the Orthodox Church needs to repair.

Look at the picture I posted above of the priest who helped us enter the church. Fr. Dane. He is now in California. We love him so much. We miss him terribly. They come up sometimes to visit and call us, it is wonderful to hear from them. I just wanted to share that with you.

Also do you know Bishop Jovan? It is funny how stupid we were before we were Orthodox, but I recall we had gone to the Serbian church for several years. And in what seems to be a somewhat common thing, we were just holding back on doing the baptisms and christmations.

Then I remember we came home from our third adoption/Russia and went to church, and Bishop Jovan was visiting. And I asked him if he thought we should have the kids baptized and chrismated for some reason. :-)
How funny to look back on that. Of course the Bishop said yes and we then did it about two weeks later.

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