Attorney Vojislav Đurišić, attorney of the Metropolis of Montenegro and the Littoral (MCP), said yesterday in court that they have not found an official document that the church in Kruševac is their property.
He announced this in the continuation of the dispute, in which the state is asking the Metropolis to return the church of St. Dimitri to them. MCP priests announced earlier that the building in the King Nikola Palace complex has always been owned by the Serbian Orthodox Church.
Yesterday, the Montenegrin Orthodox Church also requested in a letter to get involved in that dispute, stating that at one time they also performed rites in the church, but that the Metropolis changed the doors of that religious building and thus made it impossible for them to do so.
Judge Danilo Jegdić will obviously reject such a request, because yesterday he closed the main hearing and announced that he will decide on the case on April XNUMXst.
The High Court had previously rejected as impermissible the Metropolia's appeal against the judge's decision to reopen the main hearing in that dispute instead of issuing a verdict. Although he already concluded the main hearing once, at the end of last year, the judge changed his mind, considering that the factual situation was not sufficiently clarified, and that he should ask the Metropolis for proof that the disputed church was its property.
The state is asking the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral to return the church of St. Demetrius in Kruševac, while the priests claim that the building in the complex of the King Nikola Palace has always been owned by the Serbian Orthodox Church.
In the lawsuit, the state states that the palace complex is their property according to the Law on State Property, but that they are prevented from using the State Chapel (church), so they ask that it be returned to the Center for Contemporary Art.
The representatives of the Metropolis, in their counterclaim, point out that they have never had any problems with the current Center of Contemporary Art, nor has it ever been mentioned that it is theirs, and that it is indisputable that it is a religious building, so they wonder since when is the state the owner of sacred buildings.
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