A mischievous official of communist Yugoslavia suddenly wakes up in a distant, yet exotic embassy.
When Bishop Grigorije was appointed bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) in Germany seven years ago, many thought this decision resembled the tried-and-tested Yugoslav model of sending a vocal bishop far from home.
"If anyone thought about removing me, it was probably me the most, because I wanted change."
"Although I am far from my homeland and have many other responsibilities here, distance cannot diminish my love and care for the people to whom I belong, which is why my voice is sometimes heard louder than when I was physically there," says Bishop Grigorije in an interview with the BBC.
He is a bishop with a mobile phone in his hand, an Instagram profile and a blog, who says with a laugh that today it takes him less time to travel from Düsseldorf to Dubrovnik than it used to take him from Višegrad to Trebinje.
"For a bishop, a priest, and it should be the same with, for example, ministers, the most important thing is for him to be accessible to people, for them to hear him, see him, talk to him."
"It helps him not to go crazy because of the 'authorities', and it helps them to find out who he is, what he says, and thus decide whether to accept him."
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Bishop Grigorije was born in 1967. as Mladen Duric in central Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), then part of Yugoslavia, and became a monk in the Ostrog Monastery, in Montenegro, in 1992.
Since 1999, he has been at the head of the Diocese of Zahumlje-Herzegovina of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and in 2018 he moved to Düsseldorf, a city in western Germany, to head the Diocese of Düsseldorf and Germany.
The struggle between humanity and inhumanity in Serbia
Even when Bishop Grigorije is far from Serbia, she finds a way to come to him.
As he speaks to the BBC in Serbian, he is preparing to fly from nearby Düsseldorf airport to Munich, to meet students who have been protesting for months, now across Europe, seeking the truth about the collapse of a canopy in Novi Sad, which killed 16 people.
"Today, humanity travels on bicycles, on foot, awakening humanity in those who meet it."
"It's the most beautiful thing that's happened to us in the last 30-40 years."
Bishop Grigorije sees the months-long student protests as a confrontation between good and evil.
"Inhumanity makes a lot of noise, talks and lies, it is similar to the devil, it is constantly whispering something."
"It is not more numerous, but it is more intrusive, so humanity withdraws - until every measure is exceeded, which is what just happened in Serbia."
However, for Bishop Grigorije, student protests have a much deeper impact on society than the issues they directly raise.
"Students become a mirror that inevitably reveals everything, and we all see ourselves reflected in that mirror."
"My biggest fear is that someone will want to violently break that mirror, because many people are not comfortable with the reflection they see in it."
Although Bishop Grigorije himself recalls that in the 20s, during the rule of Slobodan Milošević, the church first took controversial positions towards his regime, and then openly called for its removal and a government of "national salvation", he agrees that the Serbian Orthodox Church today is far from a similar position.
"We're not even close to that today."
"Some people think that's exactly how it should be, but I say what I think is right, although I don't rule out that I might be wrong."
Vučić, Dodik and the Serbian opposition
Almost from the beginning of his episcopal career, Grigori was followed by allegations that he was engaged in politics while in the priestly robes, and for this he was Aleksandar Vučić, the President of Serbia, also openly accused.
Although he met with Vučić in person as part of his official duties, the bishop says that in recent years he has not even attended the lunches that the Serbian President traditionally organized for members of the Serbian Orthodox Church Assembly, the highest church body.
"After everything that has happened and after everything that has already been said, I have no need to say anything additional," he describes his current relationship with the current president of Serbia.
Milorad Dodik, President of Republika Srpska, one of the two entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bishop Grigorije he considered him a friend.
"The truth is that I never give up on my friends, and it's up to them how they will behave towards me - and that's the case in this case."
Germany recently initiated Dodik imposition of sanctions, and has been on similar terms for a long time lists of the United States and Great Britain.
"He was a man who seemed flexible, and that is the most important thing for Bosnia and Herzegovina."
"I thought he would have good relations with his neighbors, even if he didn't manage to love them."
Bishop Grigorije is also critical of the Serbian opposition.
"It's not pleasant to hear, but it needs to be said that all the people in the opposition who have suffered torture and been dragged through the mud, and yet failed to bring about change, should step aside."
Answers to church taboo topics
The German Metropolitan is aware that some of the positions he expresses provoke conflicting responses not only in the public, but also in the church to which he belongs.
"I know that my views are often too liberal for some people in the church."
The Serbian Orthodox Church is today one of the most closed social institutions for the media, and the BBC in Serbian has tried unsuccessfully on several occasions to obtain the views of this religious community on various issues.
The conversation with Bishop Grigori was an opportunity to get some answers.
While still Bishop of Zahumlje and Herzegovina, Grigorije participated in the establishment of a foundation that, among other things, announced assistance to people undergoing treatment for infertility, as well as financing in vitro fertilization.
Still, There are also opposing views in the SPC., who claim that in vitro fertilization results in the "mass killing of unborn people" because more eggs are fertilized.
Bishop Grigorije says that, like the issue of organ transplantation, he approaches in vitro fertilization as a man who sees children born in this way and people healed thanks to organ donation in his surroundings, among his friends.
"What we can always do is love people, be their comfort, come to their aid."
The relationship of the SPC to LGBT people are not without controversy.
While, upon his election as patriarch, the current leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Porfirije, expressed understanding of LGBT issues, and even for the legal regulation of same-sex unions, the church later returned to vocal opposition to the exercise of the already existing and guaranteed rights of these people.
"If someone confessed to me about it, as happened, I would tell them - stay here, in church, pray, no one will throw you out of here."
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On a topic that is controversial for the Serbian Church, its metropolitan in Germany does not have the slightest dilemma.
Gender sensitive language, which was referred to in SPC statements as extreme violence and derogatorily referred to as "genderization", for Bishop Grigorij, it is not a topic he dealt with.
"Language, it seems to me, closely follows and most accurately registers social changes, and we see this best in the example of new words or new meanings of existing words that have been spawned by student protests."
"Sometimes it takes time for linguistic changes to be accepted, but I don't think the changes themselves can be stopped - even in the Church we have words like nun, abbess, popady, and I don't see their existence as threatening to anyone."
Patriarch Porfirije has been at the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church since 2021.
For Bishop Grigorije, who himself was candidate for the highest office, this role today is very complex and difficult, and he adds that he "wouldn't be in the shoes" of the current patriarch.
"He is a very complex person, educated, insightful and capable, and if he uses that ability, we will have a chance."
"But if he is inflexible, it will be very difficult, first of all for him, and then for all of us," he warns.
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Germany to - pensions
As a result of his own seven years of residence in Germany, Bishop Grigorije says that the biggest problem of the church community in this country has been solved: no one is talking about the economic survival of parishes anymore because "not only have they not died out, but it seems certain that there is room for the establishment of new ones."
"The biggest advantage here is the people, we have exceptional lawyers, engineers, artists, economists, at the highest level in this country."
"But also, we have those ordinary people, workers, who are hardworking and exemplary citizens."
With undisguised joy, the German Metropolitan will describe that the churches are full of young people, and that the Orthodox are the only Christian group in Germany whose numbers are constantly growing.
However, there are still no people of Serbian origin in the highest political structures of Germany, which Bishop Grigorije explains by the turbulent past.
"Until recently, the biggest problem was the division into Chetniks, Partisans, and Ljotić's followers, which previously tore the fabric apart into several sides, and cost us our shared social success."
"Also, guest workers had the idea that they were only here temporarily, but that idea was shattered during the war of the 1990s, when their homes in Yugoslavia were destroyed, so the idea of returning lost its meaning."
At the age of 58, Bishop Grigorije believes he is almost halfway through his stay in Germany.
He expects to retire after serving in this position.
"I hope that then there will be an opportunity to devote myself to things that I don't have much time for right now, like writing."
"(Ernest) Hemingway said that a man learns to talk in two years, but it takes him more than 60 to learn to be silent - and I believe that as time goes by, except through books, there will be less and less need for me to talk."
To avoid becoming a patriarch, his mother swore at him, with whom he grew up after the early death of his father.
To the remark that she did not swear him in and that she is not involved in politics, she has a clear answer.
"I don't deal with politics, I deal with people."
“But people depend on politics – on it, whether we want to admit it or not, our life here on earth depends.”
Yet, all the time, he is also concerned with himself.
In the last book he wrote ("Stranger in the Woods"), he describes a conversation between a young monk and an old hermit who meet in a secluded place and exchange life and religious secrets.
Told in an unusual form, he admits that the story is a reflection of his inner dialogue between his younger and older self.
"We need to face ourselves, our fears."
"It's always psychologically good, but it's also spiritually good," says Bishop Grigorije.
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