At the session of the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the SOC in May 2024, it was decided to divide the Diocese of Great Britain and Scandinavia, and to form a new, independent Diocese of Great Britain and Ireland with its seat in London. The Bishop of Great Britain and Ireland, Nektarije, was enthroned in the Cathedral of Saint Sava in London at the end of November 2024…
However, only six months after the appointment of Bishop Nektarije, the trustees of the church boards in London and influential local Serbs addressed Patriarch Porfirije in a letter, requesting that he urgently review the actions of Bishop Nektarije, which they considered, and still consider, to be disastrous for the Serbian Orthodox Church and its believers in Ireland and Great Britain.
On this occasion, we spoke with one of the leaders of the Serbian community there, a parishioner of the Saint Sava church itself, where Bishop Nektarije was enthroned, and our first question related specifically to the reasons for their appeal to the Patriarchate and its head, Patriarch Porfirije.
-The trustees were forced to write to the Patriarch because they realized after 6 months that nothing was proceeding according to the agreement reached with the Patriarch, who was in London in November 2024 to enthrone the new bishop. Many were against the founding of the British-Irish Diocese at the time because it covers an area where a relatively small number of Orthodox Serbs live in Britain, with only eight parishes that do not have the income to afford a bishop and his enormous expenses. However, the Patriarch expressed optimism and hope in Bishop Nektarije, that he is a calm man who will find a way to resolve this in cooperation with the people and the trustees of the church municipalities.
THE SUBJECT OF DISPUTE BETWEEN THE BISHOP AND THE TRUSTEES: Saint Sava Church in London
–It turned out that the blessing and words of the Patriarch meant nothing to Bishop Nektarije. I must emphasize that the situation was quite complex because the Diocese was not registered with the Charity Commission; the bishop had no work permit nor a residence to live in. It was agreed to create a Constitution and Regulations for the new Diocese that would be accepted by the people and the Trustees of the church municipalities, who are responsible under the law of this country for the administrative functioning and property of the church municipalities, says our interlocutor, who for understandable reasons asked that we do not mention his name, and then continues the story:
–However, any agreement on that matter was missing and a huge danger loomed over our churches and church municipalities in Britain, because the bishop, with the help of lawyers from the Patriarchate, created, i.e., modified the Constitution and Regulations himself, according to which he is the only one authorized for all matters, not only in the Diocese but also in the church municipalities, to dispose of property, appoint, dismiss, buy, and sell everything at his own discretion, as he pleases. With such a Constitution, Bishop Nektarije threw the history and the will of the Serbian people of Britain into the mud, replacing decades of stability with complete chaos. According to his proposed statute, the Bishop gave himself the right to take out loans and mortgages using future diocesan real estate, the ownership of which he would seize from the parishes and then use to guarantee his planned debts, including the purchase of a residence, which he publicly announced on February 21. Such a document of his could turn our existing parish real estate into bare pounds in someone’s account, which is why trustees across England will deny those documents at the Charity Commission, which is their legal obligation.
How did the conflict with Bishop Nektarije begin?
-Immediately after the departure of Patriarch Porfirije, he appointed himself as the head of the Saint Sava church in London and began to change everything to his liking, which caused resentment among us believers who love our church and are proud of it. He began some kind of his own, invented war against nationalists and Chetniks, which is completely incomprehensible to us here. The founders of our church in London were exiled patriots after the Second World War, led by Saint Bishop Nikolaj and archpriest Miloje Nikolić, and we are particularly proud of that.
THE DRIVER BECAME THE DIOCESAN SECRETARY: Nenad Kačarević, first from the left next to the bishop
However, every person is welcome and warmly received in our church. Our church gathers a large number of Orthodox people from all parts of the world and everyone feels at home. Nektarije began to deal with politics and church inventory instead of solving the problem regarding the registration of the diocese and his work permit. Instead of gathering people around him, trustees and persons of reputation, he gathered several unknown people with unknown motives, with one clear goal: to impose himself with dictatorial powers in the Diocese and the Parish in London. He promoted his driver, Nenad Kačarević, to reader, subdeacon, and personal secretary in less than a month.
In your recent social media post, you mention Bishop Nektarije in the context of “a court where he is the judge, prosecutor, and jury.” Which situation or situations does that specifically refer to?
-I know it’s hard to believe, but Bishop Nektarije behaves exactly like that. Whoever does not obey him, he wants to sue and convict them in a church court. To tell the truth, the verdict has not yet arrived for the president of the church municipality, Marko Gašić, but we can predict what it will look like. Namely, after the collective letter sent to the Patriarch, he put Gašić on trial in a church court and forbade priests from giving him communion. I believe it is clear to you what that means for a believer.
WE WILL NOT LET ANYONE USURP THE CHURCH: “We were baptized here, studied, married…”
Without any guilt except that he was fulfilling his legal obligation as a trustee and his moral obligation as a responsible person towards the church in which he has been since childhood. Gašić is one of the most prominent Serbs in the UK, a trustee of the Saint Sava church, and until recently was also the vice president of the Diocesan Board. He spent his life defending the Serbian people from accusations of the Western world, starting from the wars of the nineties to the present day. During appearances on the BBC and CNN, he defended the Serbian honor. Only for the Bishop to now deprive him of communion as his first associate, with the threat that he will exclude him from the Church, i.e., excommunicate him.
He dismissed Archpriest Goran Spaić, who is a long-standing episcopal deputy and head of our church in London, from all functions and is working on driving him out of London because he refused to write an indictment against Gašić. Of course, that enraged the believers.
IN THE BISHOP’S DISFAVOR: Archpriest Goran Spaić
In what way did the bishop prevent the trustees from performing their legal duty and morally discredit them in the community, as you state in the letter to the patriarch…?
-First, I would like to mention that in Great Britain, all parish trustees of Serbian churches work without any financial compensation. For decades. Because these are the churches where they were baptized, studied, married, and saw off their parents. Besides that, their legal obligation before English and church law is clear and personal, as is their responsibility for any financial impropriety. It is their duty to preserve parish movable and immovable property for the goals of the parish; to under no circumstances allow its forced seizure by anyone, not even by the bishop; to monitor processes and point out errors and to inform the patriarch and the competent Charity Commission about it.
When they decided to point out errors regarding the registration of the Diocese, the bishop’s work permit, the dismissal of the church board in London, etc., Bishop Nektarije did not like it: he decided to enter into an open conflict with them and began, in the church in London, but also in other churches in England, to speak against the trustees in sermons, attacking them with various accusations; that they work against the church and the patriarch, that they want to take the church property.
And the truth is exactly the opposite.
Of course, the trustees cannot “take” what legally already belongs to them and what they have been successfully preserving for the good of our community for decades. Nektarije is the one who does not have and wants to take. Since his arrival, with his thoughtlessness and arrogance, he has been destroying this community that has communicated with Belgrade, with its bishops and patriarch for 75 years; which preserves and improves the property of the SOC created by our elders.
A PICTURE FROM SOME HAPPIER TIMES: The Cathedral in London in holiday attire
In the church in London, he falsely accused the trustees of kicking him out of the apartment. Yet he was staying as a tourist in an apartment that by law he must not use as a permanent residence nor have a legal housing contract for. They invited him for a conversation multiple times to resolve this issue, but he refused every time. Perhaps he created this situation by design to incite the believers against the trustees and overthrow them in that way. But only a few very naive and tendentious people believed his insinuations.
In the letter to the patriarch, it is stated that he was misinformed at the Assembly about the situation in the Diocese… What specifically is meant by that?
-The Patriarch probably did not have the right information from the beginning about the state of the church, i.e., the parishes in England, after which Bishop Nektarije took over the matter and now we are where we are.
The letter also says that before the founding of the new Diocese, the trustees were of the opinion that it was too small and financially unsustainable, but “you were assured that a modest bishop could successfully carry that cross.” What happened then?
-There are only eight parishes here in England, and a small number of people who help the parishes and the priests. The parishes work and live off the contributions of honest and modest people. In their income, there is not enough money to fund a bishop and his needs. His planned episcopal palace alone exceeds a cost of seven figures in pounds. With a modest bishop, we thought we could solve all problems. Unfortunately, we got everything but a modest bishop.
How has the activity of Bishop Nektarije reflected on church life and the believing people who came to the church, its unity?
-Until recently, this was not talked about too much in the parish among the people; it took place officially in the offices. But everything escalated with the bishop’s sermons. Besides the attempt to legalize his dictatorship before church and state authorities, he started a propaganda campaign presenting himself as a victim, seeking support from simple-minded people, but also from those with personal ambitions. You already know how that goes, titles and positions in the church are promised to people, and then a misinformation campaign is carried out among the believers so that the situation is getting worse. He hides on the internet from parishioners behind fake names through which unworthy lies and personal insults are then thrown at the expense of innocent church staff and the trustees. The priests are mostly silent as if stunned, doing their jobs, although we know for certain that none of them has supported the bishop since his very arrival. For now, they are silent fearing retaliation. In this situation, the trustees must defend themselves from slander while defending the church from greed.
You quoted the words of Bishop Nektarije: “Jesus was neither a Serb, nor was he a Chetnik.” In what context was that said?
-Because the Serbian tricolor with the SOC coat of arms had always hung in our church, and he ordered it to be removed from the church. That bothered many believers and they publicly protested. He took it upon himself to save our parish from some kind of nationalism known only to him. In our church, there is also the throne of the royal family with the engraved coat of arms of old Yugoslavia, the coats of arms of Croatia and Slovenia, and for all these decades, that has bothered no one. So much for our so-called “nationalism.”
With whom all has the bishop caused conflicts during this short time he has been in London?
-A better question is with whom he has not caused a conflict. Besides the majority of the people and the trustees, he clashed with the staff at the Saint Sava church, even with our wonderful choir conductor with an angelic voice who has been here for 32 years, of which for 22 years she voluntarily covered all the work in and around the church. Also, he clashed with the manager and host of the restaurant in the Home of Bishop Nikolaj, as well as with members of the Ravna Gora organization who are appalled by his behavior. And his conflicts reach further than our church, so he also picked a fight with the Greek Archbishop Nikitas in the very first days of his stay.
LEADERSHIP IN CONFLICT WITH THE BISHOP: Home of Bishop Nikolaj
“If the Bishop were at the head of the financial-administrative structure of the British parishes, then the UK parishes would become vulnerable to legal proceedings initiated against them in the UK due to the alleged sexual behavior of certain members of the SOC outside British borders….” you wrote in a post. Can you explain this quote to me in a bit more detail?
-That is the well-known case from 2018. An attempt by a London lawyer, of Serbian origin of course, to link accusations of alleged sexual offenses by certain Serbian bishops and priests in the states of the former Yugoslavia with our London parish. He claimed, untruthfully, that a direct financial-administrative link connects the London parish with the Serbian Patriarchate through the competent diocese. Had he succeeded in proving that the parish exists without its administrative bodies, i.e., without its own identity; that it must blindly follow the financial-administrative commands of the church hierarchy from Belgrade, the possibility would have opened up to sue the Patriarchate through our parish in London for offenses committed in Serbia.
His goal was to seek enormous court damages for the alleged victims and to collect that through the sale of the real estate of the London church of Saint Sava, which is not connected to those events in the Balkans in any way. Enormous legal costs were paid for this failed lawsuit, of course by the loser. The London trustees of the Serbian churches managed to prove that the parishes in England are organizationally independent trusts (created by our ancestors after the Second World War) and that attempt was prevented. But if Bishop Nektarije, in the name of the Diocese, manages to trample the independence of the parishes in Great Britain, then that connection between the Patriarchate and the parishes would truly exist, which could be the basis for a new potential lawsuit before English courts.
Or if, God forbid, the bishop, priests, or employees of the new Diocese in the UK run into any kind of trouble with the law, their penalties would be paid by the church municipalities in the UK. That is why it is important that, in a financial-administrative sense, the parishes in the UK retain the independence they have had since the end of the Second World War when they were formed.
Author: Antonije Kovačević Photo: Privatna i crkvena arhiva
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