The theologian and former assistant professor at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology of the University of Belgrade, Vukašin Milićević, was questioned in August of this year before the Church Court of the Archdiocese of Belgrade–Karlovci, presided over by the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Porfirije.
After the hearing, Vukašin Milićević stated that there would be no real trial before the Church Court, but that everything was merely a performance, and that the Serbian Orthodox Church would likely proceed to formally strip him of his priesthood and then exclude him from the church community.
The performance ended today, with Milićević effectively expelled from the Serbian Orthodox Church, about which he also received a written notice, signed by the hand of the aforementioned patriarch.
On this occasion, journalist and former correspondent of the Serbian Times from Sarajevo, Vuk Bačanović, who himself was expelled from his hometown several years ago, addressed the public with an open letter. We are publishing his letter in full:
“Vukašin Milićević is my friend. It is a simple sentence, but today it requires a bit of attention, because it is spoken in a time when words are spent faster than people, and human measures are easily replaced by raised tones and lowered criteria. Still, there are moments when it must be said quietly and clearly, without the need for further explanation.
I can testify about him without exaggeration: he was and remains a good priest, a caring father of four children, a reliable brother and friend. In him, empathy is not a trait one boasts about, but an inner habit, almost a natural order of things. Such people do not seek attention, but they keep it; they do not impose themselves, but they remain. And precisely because of that, in times when a person is often measured by their ability to exploit, their existence carries a quiet but persistent weight.
A LETTER TO A FRIEND: Vuk Bačanović
And it is precisely such a man who today, with a cold signature and warm indifference, was alienated by the church administration of the Serbian Orthodox Church, led by Porfirije Perić, through a carefully staged process – excommunicated. Yes, excommunicated. A heavy, archaic, medieval word, now poured into the era of digital statements and institutional callousness.
And why? Because Vukašin refused to accept that the Church should be an auxiliary body of the regime, a kind of commissariat for religious affairs of the Serbian Progressive Party. He did not fit into the rulebook of obedience. He did not know how to remain silent.
The paradox, however, is neither new nor accidental. While Vukašin is being expelled from the Church, the decoration of the Serbian Orthodox Church still hangs around the neck of the proven war instigator and pedophile Vasilije Kačavenda. And not only his. Decorations, like some sort of church jewelry, also sway around the necks of war criminals, throat-cutters, murderers, rapists, criminals, and other social dregs who, by a twist of history and blessings, managed to hide behind a cassock or within the regime’s pyramid of blackmail.
PERSECUTION: Vukašin Milićević Is No Longer a Priest of the Serbian Orthodox Church Nor a Lecturer at the Faculty of Theology in Belgrade
For illustration: in the Serbian Orthodox Church you can be a cleric – even a bishop – who uses the services of child prostitution rings and, instead of punishment, receive a decoration. You can equate the “return” of the psychopathic mass murderer and war criminal Pavle Đurišić with a “return to God” and, for that morbid theological acrobatics, be rewarded with a seat in the Synod, along with a ceremonial broadcast of the sermon on the official website of the Serbian Orthodox Church, as if it were some kind of liturgical “amen.” You can lie about being the author of a book you need for an academic title and still, without hindrance, remain a professor and the patriarch’s deacon. And that is only the tip of the iceberg.
In a simplified version: if you are obedient to a church administration that is obedient to the criminal colonial authority in Belgrade, you can rape children, spread hatred, falsify and forge documents – and everyone will pretend that nothing happened. Moreover, the worse you are, the better you are, which in the contemporary political and church vocabulary means: more easily blackmailed.
But if you are Vukašin Milićević, who is the opposite of all that – then eternal damnation follows, in the form of excommunication. Therefore, let it be recorded: I am on the side of my friend, the man Vukašin Milićević. I do not recognize this act, especially because it comes from an administration that has long since excommunicated itself through its criminal misdeeds, blasphemies, and heresies. Every such move of theirs is null and void in advance.
WITH FIRE, SWORD, AND CANDLES: Porfirije Presided Over the Court That Defrocked Milićević
Therefore, the “excommunication” that comes from them can be only one thing: the greatest possible recognition. Recognition that there still exists a man who does not participate in the joint criminal enterprise of kidnapping the Church in order to build an anti-church, who does not fit into their clientelist–obedience-based schedule of positions, bureaucracies, and pre-written verdicts ready for signature. Recognition that in that world of deified party rulebooks and decorative piety, there is still someone who remembers that faith is not received by decree, nor lost by the signature of a competent inquisitor.
In this world, genuine praise is rare, but none is clearer than when you are renounced by those who long ago renounced everything around which they now only seemingly gather,” the journalist from Sarajevo, Vuk Bačanović, says at the end of his letter.