Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

The Macedonian Church crisis worsened as the Holy See restored pastoral
life in several Uniate parishes in southeastern Macedonia that had been
founded in the mid–nineteenth century and later abolished by Serbia and
Bulgaria. In 1962, the pope installed a Uniate bishop at Skopje. In the meantime,
the Macedonian church expanded and consolidated. New churches
were built, and in 1977 a new theological school was opened in Skopje.
Thus, in the eyes of the Serbian Church, the new Church of Macedonia,
developing friendly relations with the Vatican, was viewed as a continuation
of the 1859 Union of Kukusˇ (Macedonia). Indeed, the Vatican sympathized
with the schism and arranged for Macedonian Church representatives to
attend international religious meetings and advocate their cause abroad.
Serb Church leaders blamed the communists while anti-Catholic sentiments
also grew among Serb clergy. 21
In response to the schism, the Serbian Church launched a struggle for
church property in Macedonia. 22 Special importance was attributed to the
monastery of Saint Prokhor Pčinjski. 23 This nineteenth-century monastery
had become a national museum of the Republic of Macedonia, commemorating
the foundation of the republic. On Saint Elijah’s Day (2 August) in
1944, the communist-led Partisan liberation movement had held a general
session of the so-called Anti-Fascist Assembly of the People’s Liberation of
Macedonia (ASNOM), in the compound of this monastery. The session, according
to the Macedonian historian Slavko Dimevski, “had been the highest
achievement in the history of the Macedonian people—it was a final phase
of the centennial struggle for the legal-constitutional foundation of the Macedonian
nation.” 24 After the schism, Serbian monks at Saint Prokhor and
the Serb Bishop of the nearby Vranje, filed lawsuits demanding the eviction
of the museum. The Macedonian Church and state closed ranks, opposing
the Serbian pressure. Macedonian clergy also intensified the rebuilding of
their own new churches. A modern cathedral dedicated to Saint Kliment
and located in the center of the capital city of Skopje was to succeed the
church of Holy Martyr Mina, demolished in the catastrophic earthquake of
1963. The magnificent new cathedral opening in 1990, symbolically marked
the emancipation of the independent Macedonian Orthodox Church.
The Serbian Church, shaken by the Macedonian schism at home, was in
the meantime hit by another schism abroad. The new schism alienated from
the Belgrade patriarchate its North American branch, with 3 dioceses, 72
parishes, and 129 temples in the United States and Canada. Since the early
1950s, the Serbian Church in North America had vehemently opposed the
normalization of church-state relations in Yugoslavia, demanding of the patriarch
that he carry out an overt anticommunist struggle. 25 The discord
was aggravated by a number of other issues concerning administration of
parishes, appointments of bishops, and the distribution of Western aid for
anticommunist activities. Finally, the so-called Free Serbian Orthodox
Church of America broke ties with the Belgrade patriarchate in 1962. The
conflict had begun during the World War II, when the head of the American
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