Pastor Burns Urges Pristina to Grant Patriarch Access to Pec

Mark Burns, a US pastor and adviser on spiritual matters to President Donald Trump, has called on the authorities in Pristina to permanently guarantee Serbian Patriarch Porfirije unhindered access to the Patriarchate of Pec, the Visoki Decani Monastery and other Orthodox shrines in Kosovo. He made the appeal during a joint tour of Serbia, Kosovo and Republika Srpska that he undertook alongside the Patriarch.

Burns, the founder of the Spiritual Diplomats movement, stressed that access to Serbian shrines should not depend on any given political judgment but must be secured as a permanent right. His appeal comes at a moment when the question of free movement for the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo is once again gaining an international voice, and it is precisely that which lends the statement weight earlier appeals from church circles did not carry.

What the American pastor is asking for

At the heart of Burns’ appeal is a demand to reconsider the rule under which the Patriarch must announce every visit to Kosovo 72 hours in advance. That administrative condition, he noted, hampers regular religious life and turns a pilgrimage into a procedure that hinges on approval. Burns said every such requirement should be reviewed, because freedom of worship cannot be made conditional on filing deadlines.

At the same time, the pastor carefully drew the limits of his message. He emphasised that the appeal was not directed against the Albanian people, the Muslim community or the citizens of Kosovo, but was instead an argument for religious freedom and mutual respect. With that distinction, Burns sought to move the issue away from the framework of ethnic dispute and back onto the terrain of basic rights, a position that is harder to contest before international opinion.

His visit came shortly after the launch of the United States and Serbia strategic dialogue in Washington, and after extensive warnings from the Raska-Prizren Diocese about the deteriorating conditions for Serbian Orthodox believers in Kosovo. That sequence shows that the question of access to shrines is no longer viewed in isolation, but as part of a broader framework of relations between Belgrade, Pristina and Washington.

Why access to the shrines remains an open question

The Patriarchate of Pec is not merely a tourist or historical point on the map. It is one of the most significant spiritual centres of the Serbian Orthodox Church, a site tied to its continuity and identity. For that reason any restriction on access, however it is presented as a technical matter of security or procedure, carries a symbolic and political dimension that no side overlooks.

Free access to Serbian shrines in Kosovo remains sensitive precisely because it runs through the unresolved status and the low level of trust between Belgrade and Pristina. Institutions in Pristina regulate access through their own procedures, while the Serbian side and the church see in those procedures an obstacle to guaranteed rights. The addition of a voice like Burns’, with a link to the American administration, returns the issue to the table of those who hold sway over the dynamics of the dialogue.

The open question is whether Pristina will respond to this appeal with a concrete step or, as with earlier similar calls, leave it unanswered. Should religious freedom in Kosovo be a permanently guaranteed right, independent of the political climate, or will it continue to depend on procedures and deadlines that shift from one year to the next?