Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

anch of the Church, Bishop Dionisije, in spite of the Allies’ support for
the communist-led antifascist resistance, remained supportive of King Peter
Karadjordjević and General Mihajlović’s Četniks, who collaborated with the
Axis. According to the memoirs of a Serb priest in America, the U.S. State
Department criticized Bishop Dionisije and the nationalist Serbs for extending
support to the collaborator Mihajlović. 26 After 1945, Bishop Dionisije
and the exiled Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović labored for the unification of the
Serbian diaspora, reinforced with exiled Četniks, around King Peter and the
Church, with the aim of organizing an opposition front to the communist
regime in Yugoslavia and the new federal Yugoslav republic. Dionisije, Nikolaj,
and the king urged the Church at home to boycott the regime or
even to mobilize people against it. Church leaders at home, however, particularly
when Germanus became the patriarch, chose a strategy of cautious
cooperation with the regime, combined with the gradual ethnic and religious
mobilization of Serbs. In response to Dionisije’s unilateral acts of
proclamation of the “Free Orthodox Church,” the Holy Assembly of Bishops
on its session of 27 July 1963 excommunicated him. He rejected the decision
and, using Bishop Velimirović’s arguments, accused Germanus and
the domestic bishops of collaboration with the communists and disregarding
the sacred task of the commemoration of the Ustasˇa genocide of Serbs.
The Church historian Djoko Slijepčević has speculated that the Yugoslav
communist secret police, UDBA, masterminded the schism in order to undermine
the alliance of Serb exile organizations and King Peter with the
Church. 27
The list of troubles for Serb Church leaders was not exhausted. Ever since
1945, Serb bishops had been frustrated about the proregime clerical association
that had grown strong and independent from bishops’ authority.
Owing to the fact that Orthodox clergy had been persecuted severely in
Macedonia by the Bulgarians and in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina by the
Ustasˇas, the Orthodox churches of Serbia and Macedonia had had relatively
the largest number of Partisan war veterans and sympathizers of Tito, compared
to a few clerical allies Tito recruited in other churches. The regime
granted these patriotic priests pensions through the clerical association,
which publicly supported brotherhood and unity and was active in interfaith
dialogue. According to documents from the archive of the Federated Republic
of Croatia’s commission for relations with religious communities, nearly
80 percent of all state money allocated for improving church-state relations
went to the clerical associations (Orthodox and Muslim) for their offices,
newsletters, regular activity, and priests’ pensions and health care. 28 Clerical
associations were managed by priests who had taken part in the antifascist
resistance movement. An almanac published by the Association of Orthodox
Clergy of Croatia in 1971 proudly declared: “our Association ...made a
valuable and dignified effort in building our common homeland, in particular
by consolidating our peoples’ and nationalities’ brotherhood and unity
and advocating religious tolerance.” 29 Although some bishops prohibited
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