Church bell stolen near Orahovac in blow to Serbian heritage

A church bell has disappeared from the Church of Holy Sunday near Orahovac, in the southern part of Kosovo and Metohija, the Eparchy of Raska and Prizren announced, expressing deep concern and calling for a response from the authorities. The eparchy treats the loss of the bell, one of the most recognizable symbols of an Orthodox church, as a serious attack on religious property and on the spiritual life of the Serbian community in the area.

The news arrives at a moment when, according to church sources, pressure on Serbian heritage in Kosovo is not easing but taking on new forms. Around the same time, a self-proclaimed priest publicly claimed that medieval Serbian churches in the vicinity of Podujevo are in fact Albanian, which the eparchy sees as a systematic effort to deny the historical and cultural identity of those monuments.

A bell as target, heritage as message

The theft of a bell is not merely a property crime. A bell calls the faithful, marks time, and, in a symbolic sense, confirms a community’s presence in a place. When such an object disappears from a church that has stood for centuries, the message goes beyond material loss. That is precisely why the Eparchy of Raska and Prizren, which oversees the largest share of Serbian spiritual heritage in Kosovo and Metohija, insists that the institutions treat the case not as a routine report but as part of a broader pattern.

That pattern, according to church accounts, includes attempts to rewrite the origin of monuments. A self-proclaimed priest who presents medieval Serbian churches as Albanian, and who has called for Serbian Patriarch Porfirije to be declared persona non grata, may act as an individual, but his statements gain a platform and an audience. For the Serbian side this is no marginal episode, but an attempt to normalize the contesting of history.

Responsibility for protecting religious sites and cultural assets on the ground is divided and sensitive. The Serbian side has warned for years that attacks on churches, cemeteries and monuments go unprosecuted, while the other side insists that security and the rule of law are guaranteed to all. The vanished bell near Orahovac reopens the question of who, in practice, carries the burden of that protection.

Who protects Serbian holy sites in Kosovo?

The question is not rhetorical. The Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo and Metohija safeguards dozens of churches and monasteries, some of them under Unesco protection, many of them dependent day to day on goodwill and security guarantees on the ground. When a bell disappears and no one is held to account, the community’s trust erodes further. When the very origin of the churches is publicly disputed on top of that, the framework in which such protection should exist erodes as well.

The Eparchy of Raska and Prizren is demanding a response from the authorities, but for that response to carry weight it must be visible and measurable: identifying the perpetrators, recovering or compensating for what was stolen, and taking a clear stance toward those who dispute the identity of the monuments. Without that, each new incident becomes a precedent for the next.

Serbian heritage in Kosovo and Metohija is not an abstraction. It consists of specific churches, specific bells and specific people who live alongside them. The loss of a single bell near Orahovac may look like a small event in a sea of news, but it is from such seemingly small steps that a sense of who protects whom is either built or dismantled. Will the disappearance of the bell from the Church of Holy Sunday be recorded merely as another unprosecuted report, or as the moment when protecting this heritage was finally taken seriously?