The Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral announced that the President of Montenegro, Milo Đukanović, apologized on behalf of Montenegro to some people for the crimes committed during the war.
This, as they state, unequivocally establishes them in the belief that he was the actor of "all those evils".
The Metropolia reacted to the statements of Đukanović, who said, among other things, that the president of the state must speak and work against those who in the Montenegrin libertarian society and the state of the honorable tradition of the Christian and Eastern Orthodox churches "proclaim villains and butchers of innocent women and children as saints - Mac Vukojičić and Slobodan Šiljko", and that their recommendations for worship and the clean mantle of the Montenegrin priest were "previous experiences from the BIA, the 63rd Parachute Division or some other genocidal war from the 90s".
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They assessed Đukanović's statement as exuding "inappropriate nervousness and irresponsibility of uttering a public word", and that they were speaking to him in the way that would be of greatest benefit to him and everyone following this polemic - "the truth".
"The nationalist party in the early nineties in Yugoslavia was played by politicians, among whom Milo Đukanović certainly stands out. And all this by abusing the patriotic feelings and age-old collective emotions of the Yugoslav people, and in the first place the Serbian people as the most numerous and widespread in the territory of the former state. There is there is plenty of evidence and we are talking about the process of war politics that lasted for years. There is no one among mature and adult people who believes that the Church (or any other religious community) had a significant influence on the events of the war and on warmongering decisions and commands, in relation to political group whose prominent member was Đukanović. He is certainly neither the only one nor the most responsible for the evils of war, but I guess he is the only one who, without a shred of conscience, retroactively transforms himself into Gandhi in front of all of us, while transferring the responsibility for his own inactions to others," it is stated in announcement of the Metropolis.
As they said, it is beyond all taste to listen to them being lectured about responsibility for national suffering by "one who is an accomplice in starting all three wars, and a proven fugitive from all three battlefields, leaving the local people and the local Church in the lurch", adding that "and it's just that he ran away, but it's painful to listen to him talk about those topics now".
"But reading his last address to the public in which he attributes the evils for which he personally apologized to the Church, and in which he alludes to the displacement and expulsion of Serbs from their age-old hearths, we wonder: does he, as a participant in the disintegration of the SFRY, need to apologize to the Serbian people to whom DPS and his political leadership first sent soldiers and weapons, then fuel and other raw materials, and then left him alone to fight the war that they started for him. The Church did not abandon its people either before, during or after that war. Not even in Croatia, neither in Bosnia nor in Kosovo," the Metropolia announced.
They also believe that when they publicly admonish Đukanović that it would be wise for him to stick to his constitutional powers, they are not acting illegally or outside the system, but are joining those social forces that in his last interview with RTCG recognized multiple excesses of competence: "interference in the internal affairs of the Church, pressure to the prosecution, inciting religious and inter-ethnic intolerance...etc".
Someone who pretends to be the president of all citizens and the guardian of the democratic order, according to them, cannot allow himself to exceed his powers.
"Because such a person answers to everyone (including believing citizens), and churches and religious institutions only to God and their believers. Unless, of course, someone does something illegal. And for such illegality that he attributes to the Church in his public advertisements, Mr. Đukanović would have to seek a remedy before the courts and before the institutions of the state, which he has governed for decades, if he has evidence for it. However, he can neither prove his falsehoods, nor, as a long-time ruler of a one-party government, is he used to addressing the institutions. He keeps them under the authority of his own cult personalities. And that is the humiliation of the state and national identity of the state of Montenegro," the announcement reads.
They also add that the helicopter flight that took the church to Rumi could not be approved by the military leadership without the consent of the political leadership of Montenegro, nor that the church could be transported to the helipad without the knowledge and support of the then MUP of Montenegro.
They also point out that they do not agree with the assessment of the negative character of that procedure, and that even now they think it was a "blessed deed", but do they agree that "the president of the state is two-faced when he now talks about that event like this".
"When it comes to the helicopter that made possible the enthronement of Metropolitan Ioaniki, it is certainly an expression of a much higher level of civilizational development and awareness than the burning tires on the highway that Đukanović is playing with as if with a stick that could set fire to all of Montenegro. God willing and luckily - he did not succeed in that idea, and that is what preserved the image and progress of both Cetinje and Montenegro. When it comes to topics from church history, it is really beneath honor and intellectual novelty for priests and theologians to discuss these topics with a person who shows an elementary ignorance of basic things. He has the right to such a reduced and superficial attitude towards his own history as Milo Đukanović, but he does not have the right as the President of Montenegro. A country that would be unimaginable without the Cetinje Metropolitanate "the only remaining episcopal see of Svetosava that has been preserved without interruption" and which as such is the "successor of the Patriarchate of Peć" as Montenegrin prime ministers, princes and metropolitans have said throughout Montenegrin history", concludes the address of the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral.
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