Belveder at Five: Joanikije Serves Liturgy in Cetinje

Metropolitan of Montenegro and the Littoral and Archbishop of Cetinje Joanikije Micovic served the Divine Liturgy today at the Cetinje Monastery, on the day marking five years since his enthronement. The date carries weight far beyond the church calendar: September 5, 2021, was the day one of the most severe clashes between police and citizens in Montenegro’s recent history accompanied the enthronement of the Metropolitan of Montenegro and the Littoral, and the question of the status of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and of Serbs in the country, remains open five years later.

Concelebrating with Joanikije today were Archpriest Dusan Bigovic, Archpriest Mirceta Sljivancanin, rector of the Church of St. George below Gorica, and Archimandrite Sergije, abbot of Ostrog. In his homily, the metropolitan spoke about the trials that marked his five years of service and about the essence of the episcopal role.

“Those trials have not stopped, but what matters most is that we care for the church, that we have love, that we know how to forgive,” Joanikije said in his homily at the liturgy in the Cetinje Monastery.

“The episcopal ministry is expressed above all through conciliarity, through togetherness,” he added.

What Actually Happened on the Day of the Enthronement

The enthronement on September 5, 2021, at the Cetinje Monastery followed days of escalating tension in the city, and two different accounts exist of how the church leaders arrived that day. In today’s homily, Joanikije himself recalled that Serbian Patriarch Porfirije “very bravely flew to Cetinje that morning with Bishop David of Krusevac,” describing the whole event as a “truly wondrous” moment after which, as he put it, “everything was overwhelmed with joy.” Independent reports from the scene in 2021, including an article published today by the Radio Skala portal to mark the anniversary, describe the moment differently: according to those accounts, it was Patriarch Porfirije and the newly elected Metropolitan Joanikije who landed in Cetinje by helicopter, while Bishop David is mentioned only later, among the bishops who attended the enthronement.

On the night before the enthronement, between September 4 and 5, 2021, around four thousand citizens gathered on the highway leading to Cetinje, at a spot known as Belveder, behind barricades of cars, trucks, tires and stones. The first tear gas canister on the streets of Cetinje was fired at 5:57 a.m. on September 5, and clashes between police and citizens broke out at several locations, from Dvorski Trg (Palace Square) and Bajova Street to the Gradska Kafana and the immediate surroundings of the Cetinje Monastery. Montenegro’s prime minister at the time was Zdravko Krivokapic, its interior minister Sergej Sekulovic, and its deputy prime minister Dritan Abazovic.

What Investigations Later Found

Montenegro’s Protector of Human Rights and Freedoms later found violations of the European Convention on Human Rights in the way police acted that day. At one location, police officially recorded 31 uses of coercive measures, while an analysis of video footage established that the real number was 85, with suspicion of 24 more, a discrepancy that years later became the subject of an official institutional finding rather than merely a matter of participants’ memories.

For Serbia, and for Serbs in Montenegro, the status of the Metropolitanate of Montenegro and the Littoral has never been merely an internal church matter. The 2021 enthronement and the clashes that accompanied it shaped Podgorica’s relationship with the Serbian Orthodox Church for years afterward, and the way the state apparatus treated the arrival of the Serbian patriarch that year still serves as a benchmark for judging how much that relationship has changed since.

Tomorrow: Gathering Near Biljarda

The anniversary will also be marked in a different way tomorrow, September 6, 2026. A gathering has been called for 6 p.m. on the plateau next to Biljarda in Cetinje, with Cetinje intellectuals Adnan Cirgic, Aleksandar Radoman and Boban Batricevic inviting residents in a written appeal. “That is why we invite all citizens who carry on the Belveder heritage to join the gathering that will be held tomorrow in Cetinje,” they said in a statement published today by the Portal Analitika.

Two separate events on the same date, a liturgy at the monastery and an announced gathering on a plateau a few hundred meters away, show that five years after Belveder, Cetinje still carries two parallel memories of that day, one religious and one civic, which meet again this weekend in the same part of the city.