Enmity and Neglect Take Toll on Serb Churches in Kosovo

After the St. Nedelja's Day service was over, the church was locked to be up and again will stay locked until the annual service is held again in 2022. Few Serbs live nearby, and the young priests who used to have lodgings on the church's premises are long gone.

For the rest of the year, no one looks after the site, even though it is on the Kosovo Culture Ministry's temporary protection list, one of a total of 46 Serbian Orthodox churches. This makes them eligible for rehabilitation by the state, and prevents anyone from building other structures close by.

Like the Church of St. Nedelja, many other Serbian Orthodox churches in Kosovo have remained closed since local residents fled their homes after the war in Kosovo ended in June 1999 after Slobodan Milosevic's regime pulled its forces back into Serbia.

The vast majority of the Serbs who left Kosovo at that time have never returned, greatly reducing the number of worshippers at churches in Kosovo. Many Serbs see Kosovo as the cradle of their religion and the site of some of Serbian Orthodox Christianity's important churches and monasteries, so it has remained a flashpoint issue ever since.

Last month, ethnic Albanian students in Pristina staged protests after the Serbian Orthodox Church held a liturgy in an unfinished church on the Pristina University campus whose ownership is hotly disputed and the subject of court proceedings. Kosovo Albanisn have claimed the church was built in the Milosevic era as part of a Serb 'colonisation' project.

There have also been altercations at the annual celebration of Vidovdan (St. Vitus' Day) at Gazimestan near Pristina on June 28, an important date for Serbs as it is also when Ottoman forces defeated the medieval Serbian kingdom in the 1389...

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