Fifteen candidates in the race for the new patriarch? – Society

The 46th new head of the Serbian Orthodox Church should be elected within the constitutional term of three months, but the epidemiological situation is already mentioned as a possible reason for a possible postponement of the Electoral Assembly to May next year.

The situation with the crown is just one more moment in the pre-electoral ecclesiastical “race” for the new patriarch, in which, if the current situation is maintained, 43 archbishops have the right to vote, 34 of whom fulfill the condition to be elected. .

A triple candidacy in the second round will require at least 22 votes.

In theory, each of the 34 potential candidates has a chance of being elected patriarch.

Church sources speculate that at least fifteen of them have the ambition to put a “white frying pan” on their heads, but in all the media speculation, especially in the pro-regime media, the Bishop of Bačka Irinej (Bulović) and his spiritual son, the metropolitan Porfirio, are favored. He denied that it was a “state project for a new patriarch.”

Both were considered candidates for the government, which does not exclude a possible “competition within their home”, if the matter is not cut in time in Andrićev venac.

Although it seems that the sudden departure of the Metropolitan of Montenegro and the Litoral Amfilohije (Radović) and Patriarch Irinej in the space of three weeks left an open passage, mainly to Bishop Bačka, towards the throne of Saint Sava, experts in ecclesiastical circumstances affirm that the situation in Parliament is more complicated. .

It is said that many bishops did not forget the scandalous decoration that Aleksandar Vučić received last year with the highest order of the Serbian Orthodox Church due to the defense of Kosovo and Metohija, which now adds to the discontent with the patriarch’s state funeral. , where politicians sat in front of “inappropriate” Serbian bishops.

There are other arbitrariness of the Synod.

Measured by the (un) critical attitude towards the Vučić regime, especially when it comes to its Kosovo policy, according to unofficial assessments from Danas sources, the balance of power in Parliament is about equal, with a group of bishops “undecided”.

To this must be added the theological, liturgical and other differences between Serbian bishops, including the attitude towards ecumenism, the Vatican, Fanar, as well as the influence of the government, foreign embassies, other churches, the possible “purchase of votes “, which was, as speculated in 2010 in the last Electoral Parliament.

The head of Russian ecclesiastical diplomacy, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk (Alfeyev), sincerely respected Patriarch Irinej as a “great Russian friend”, but by attending his funeral, as they say, he also wanted to “check” whether the SOC continues to support to the Russian Orthodox. church in Ukraine’s dispute with Constantinople.

During the patriarch’s illness, the topic of the pope’s possible visit to Serbia was forced on the websites of the church and the Croatian media, to which the new head of Serbian diplomacy and the spiritual son of the patriarch’s vicar, Nikola Selaković, contributed the day after the funeral.

Although it is a parliamentary issue, Selaković stated that he is convinced that “both the State and the Serbian Orthodox Church will meet the conditions for the Pope to visit Serbia”, noting that Vučić always consulted with the late Patriarch Irinej on such decisions. , which was probably expected. of his successor on the throne of Saint Sava.

Right now, it’s hard to say who might be on the short list.

In addition to speculation about the Novi Sad and Zagreb candidates, as well as the alleged ambitions of the president of the Dabro-Bosnia Metropolitan Chrysostom Synod (Jević), Bishop Joanikije (Mićović) of Budva-Nikšić is also mentioned in the combinations.

He is the most serious candidate for the new Metropolitan of Montenegro and the Litoral.

Church circles claim that in addition to being necessary in Montenegro, Bishop Joanikije is supposedly unacceptable to Bishop Bački.

At the same time, the headquarters of the Serbian Orthodox Church recalls that no favorites were chosen for the last two electoral assemblies of heads.

– The electoral council that elects the new patriarch is made up of all the active hierarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church, both bishops who have dioceses and vicarious bishops. Retired bishops are not part of the Electoral Council. All archbishops of the Autonomous Orthodox Archbishopric of Ohrid also have the right to elect a Serbian patriarch, as they have full administrative and priestly authority, as do other bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Regarding the right to vote, any active diocesan bishop who has ruled a diocese for at least five years has the right to be elected Serbian patriarch. Retired bishops and vicars who do not have their own diocese cannot be elected patriarchs. The same conditions apply to POA bishops, which means that they can be candidates for patriarch, if they are active diocesan archbishops with at least five years of experience in managing the diocese, explains legal historian Zoran Cvorovic, professor of the Faculty of Law of the University of Kragujevac, for Danas.

It points out that “at the beginning of the Electoral Assembly, a list of all the candidates who meet the conditions prescribed by the SOC Constitution is being drawn up so that they can be elected Serbian patriarch.”

According to him, “the second issue, which cannot be normatively re-examined at this time, is the damage caused to the unity of the Serbian Orthodox Church and its proper functioning by the institution of vicarious bishops, contrary to numerous canons that stipulate that only there may be a bishop in a diocese. “

Professor Cvorovic points out that “the role of the vicarious bishops comes to the fore in the Electoral Council, where they are shown as part of the voting machinery of their diocesan archbishop, so the electoral combinatorial of those archbishops who have more vicars has greater chances of success “.

– The procedure for the election of a new Serbian patriarch is regulated by the Parliament Decision of May 24, 2005, published in the SOC Gazette. This decision became an integral part of the Constitution of our local autocephalous Church and, in accordance with it, Patriarch Irinej was elected in 2010. Any change in the procedure for electing a patriarch at this time would be contrary to the SOC Constitution. , as Article 62, paragraph 2 of the SOC Constitution stipulates that while the patriarchal throne is vacant, the new church regulations cannot be passed as a rule. According to article 63, this can only be done because of an “urgent and urgent need”, and that need certainly cannot be considered a change in the procedure for the election of a patriarch – Professor Čvorović is categorical.

Taking into account that there are currently three vacant dioceses in the SOC: the Archbishopric of Belgrade and Karlovac, the Metropolitanate de Montenegro y el Litoral and the Diocese of Valjevo, Professor Cvorovic explains that a new patriarch is first elected in the Electoral Assembly and then new bishops for the vacant seats in the regular parliamentary session.

Its temporary administrators have only one right to vote: their home diocese.

Conditions for moving the election deadline

– The period of three months in which, according to the Constitution of the Serbian Orthodox Church, a new patriarch must be elected, is determined according to the canonical period of three months, determined in the IV Ecumenical Council, in which a bishop must be elected . Authorized medieval canons, such as Zonara and Valsamon, allowed, as an exception, the extension of this canonical term for serious reasons. Since neither the Constitution of the Serbian Orthodox Church nor the canons state such serious reasons, and the medieval canons included, for example, war occupation, the reason for “breaking” the constitutional deadline for choosing a patriarch must be extremely serious. A pandemic can be one of those reasons only if there is a complete suspension of international traffic in the coming months. It should be noted that the SOC Constitution requires a relatively high quorum for the Electoral Assembly; For the Assembly to begin working on it, at least two-thirds of the active diocesan bishops must be present, which means that the vicarious bishops do not enter the quorum. If we know that the Serbian Orthodox Church has a large number of bishops in the diaspora, then their absence would really create a problem with the convocation of the Electoral Assembly. If, on the other hand, a quorum is successfully secured, then, according to the Constitution of the Serbian Orthodox Church, a bishop present can vote for a bishop justifiably absent by means of a special power of attorney, explains Professor Zoran Cvorovic.

The task of the “ober-procurator” of Vučić

– It is obvious that with the departure of Patriarch Irinej and Metropolitan Amfilohije in Parliament, some balance of power that existed before was lost, but it can be expected that during the Electoral Assembly there will be a certain redistribution of power within the episcopate of the SOC. Around the ambitions of some bishops to be elected as the 46th Serbian patriarch, new episcopal camps will undoubtedly be formed, conditionally speaking. The current government has only one concern when it comes to the election of a new Serbian patriarch: how to get a person at the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church to better understand Vučić’s willingness to permanently amputate Kosovo and Metohija of Serbia than to Repeated position of Parliament. recognition of the so-called Republic of Kosovo is unacceptable. It is obvious that Vučić assigned the key role in the work of state interference in the election of the new patriarch to his “Ober-Procurator” Nikola Selaković, whose activity in the church field these days is very remarkable – says Professor Čvorović .

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