Serbian Activists Vow To Stop Church Moving Tesla's Urn

After leaders of the Serbian Orthodox Church again expressed a wish to move the remains of the scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla from his Belgrade museum, a group called "Leave Tesla Alone" has vowed to prevent any such attempt - as it did once before.

"We will always be there to defend the wishes of Tesla and his heirs who wanted him buried at the Museum," Marko Marjanovic, one of the group's organisers, said.

The director of Nikola Tesla Museum, Branimir Jovanovic, was not immediately available for comment but the museum has said it has not received an official request to move Tesla's remains.

The Church, however, vows to continue striving for the transfer, calling his current place of rest "a disgrace".

"The [Church] Council thinks that the earthly remains of the Serbian and world giant Nikola Tesla do not belong with museum exhibits - this fact is a unique precedent and a disgrace," a Serbian Orthdox Church press release said on May 26.

For years, the Council, the Church's governing body, has wanted to move the urn containing Tesla's ashes to St Sava's cathedral, also in Belgrade, or to the adjacent churchard.

But Marko Marjanovic accuses the Church of wanting to to claim Tesla's remains mainly in order to promote St Sava's into a major tourist attraction.

"They say Tesla should not be a part of a museum exhibition but they would make him part of a tourism exhibition," Marjanovic said.

"They wish to appropriate him, but Tesla belongs to the entire world," he added.

Tesla's remains were almost moved in 2014, when Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Irinej, Zorana Mihajlovic, then the outgoing Energy Minister, and Sinisa Mali, then head of the interim authority in Belgrade, signed an agreement to move the urn to the...