Page 422 - Kosovo Metohija Heritage

Bishop atanasije (jevtić)
The Sarcophagus of Serbian landlord Rodop in lid the Church of Saint Nicholas, Banja Rudnička, 14th century
werebetween10,000and15,000icons, about 7,000 to 10,000 religious books, thousands of vessels and certainly hundreds of church bells or clappers (in: Zadužbine Kosova (Endowments of Kosovo), Prizren-Belgrade, 1987, pp. 385–547).
These numerous Holy Shrines of the Church and the people in Serbi- an Kosovo and Metohija are neither “mythology” nor “mythomania” but a testimonial to the accumulated Orthodox identity of many centu- ries of an honorable Christian peo- ple, gifted and creative both materi- ally and spiritually, a historical peo- ple of God in culture and civilization whose origins are not recent but who recently and today have been humil- iated by Nazi Fascists, Communists and certain individuals from euro- pean and U.S. circles as never before in its difficult but glorious history. is it necessary to add and emphasize that none of these Holy Shrines of God and the people in Kosovo and Metohija, together with their bones and holy relics, with their living peo- ple near them and in them, have ev-
er been or are today a threat to any- one. That is why only barbarians and brutes can raze and torch them and what they represent; unfortunately,
Shrinesbe“protectedbytheKosovoProtectionCorps,”i.e. the same people who organized and led the terrorist cam- paign of torching and razing of everything Serbian and Or- thodox in Kosovo.12
The albanians, unfortunately in great number, are do- ing this with such pathological hatred against everything in Kosovo and Metohija that is Serbian and Slavic and Or- thodox that they have even killed a United Nations official (a Bulgarian by origin from New York) for uttering a single Slavic word on the main street of Priština! They lie shame- lessly when they tell the West they are destroying only “new churches built during the last ten years under Milošević” because among the 112 Holy Shrines they have torched and destroyed, eight were medieval Serbian monasteries from the 13th and 14th centuries; 30 were churches built between the 13th and the 16th centuries; 20 were churches from the 17th to the beginning of the 19th centuries; ten were from the 20th century; and only ten were more recently built (af- ter 1989) churches, most of these also being restorations or renewals built on older foundations, as in the case of the cathedral in Djakovica (which the Communists and the albanians destroyed on the feast of St. Sava in 1950) or the cathedral of Christ the Savior in Priština, the endowment church of the Priština and Kosovo Serbs built to replace 12 previously existing churches in Priština. We will not dis- cuss here all the churches destroyed in Kosovo and Meto- hija during the time of the Ottoman occupation, in place of which or from whose materials mosques were built.13 Nor will we list here the 26 churches, most of them in Metohija, destroyed by the albanian Balists (Nazi-Fascists) during the occupation of 1941–1945.14 However, we will mention the fact that during the half century of Communist rule (when the albanians held most power) and even under Milošević’s rule (1989–1999), the albanians in Kosovo and Metohija built proportionally many more mosques than the number of churches renewed or built by the Serbs, Or- thodox churches destroyed and razed by the albanians and the Communists. (it should be kept in mind that during Tito’s Communism islam derived great benefit while Chris- tianity—especially Orthodoxy—was persecuted).
Unfortunately, despite all this, after five years of their “robust” presence in Kosovo and Metohija two world su- perpowers, NaTO and UNMiK (The United Nations in- terim administration Mission in Kosovo), are thinking about Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries like one of their conscienceless officials, who said that “the three
12 almost two decades ago (1986) inspired poet Miodrag Pavlović wrote the following lines of both the Communists and the alba- nians: “No Agarene / or outcast / can defend your sons / No arsonist / can protect you / from the flames” (From the poem “Kosovo iii”).
13 For example, Sinan-pasha’s mosque in Prizren, built of the stones of the destroyed church of Holy archangels near Prizren and many others listed by Milan ivanović in his previously mentioned study in the monograph Zadužbine Kosova (Endowments of Kosovo), pp. 387–448.
14 They are listed in the monograph Endowments of Kosovo
terrorists continue to do so under the eyes of enlightened europe and the whole world at the end of the second and the beginning of the third millennium of Christian civiliza- tion! The few protests that can be heard rarely come from those with authority, such as UNeSCO, and are usually formal and declarative in nature, yielding no results. For after five years of absolute rule by the international com- munity in Kosovo and Metohija, not one albanian terror- ist, murderer or arsonist has yet been caught, brought to trial and sentenced!
Today’s albanians from Kosovo and Metohija, which was betrayed and sold by the Communists from the up- scale Belgrade quarter of Dedinje, having already torched, razed and destroyed more than 110 Serbian churches and monasteries in Kosovo and Metohija, want to raze and up- root the remaining Serbian Holy Shrines in Kosovo and Metohija, too. That is why they continue to attack the Peć Patriarchate, Visoki Dečani and Gračanica despite the pro- tection of NaTO tanks, demanding that NaTO patrols and armored transporters pull back—“lest they disgrace our democracy”! Most recently, the albanians in Kosovo provisional institutions are demanding that Serbian Holy
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