serving an 18-months prison sentence last week for refusing to accept the authority of the government-backed Macedonian Orthodox Church, a news agency reported Friday, July 29.
Makfax, an independent Macedonian news agency, said Serbia-Montenegro Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic made the demand in a recent phone conversation with Macedonia’s Chief of Diplomacy Ilinka Mitreva.
He reportedly said that Macedonia’s refusal to release the 39-year old Vraniskovski overshadowed diplomatic relations. In addition the Serbian Foreign Ministry reportedly expressed regrets for the "Macedonian authorities’ failure to refuse to be held hostage by ecclesiastical disputes."
Serbia’s concern is shared by Western diplomats and human rights activists. Some have complained that the bishop was jailed without access to Christian literature. "The archbishop was not permitted to take his prayer book, the Gospels, an icon or any of the insignia of his rank with him," said Jovan’s colleague, Bishop Marko of Dremvica and Bitola, in an interview with the religious Forum 18 News Service (F18News).
BAPTISM PUNISHED
Vraniskovski, who was previously sentenced to five days solitary confinement for baptizing his
sister’s grandchild, was sentenced last month by the appeal court in his home town Bitola following a long legal battle.
Prosecutors argued that Vraniskovski’s activities and refusal to recognize the Macedonian Orthodox Church amounted to "inciting national, racial and religious hatred, schism and intolerance."
Vraniskovski said he is the victim of a campaign by some church leaders and government officials to persecute him and his group for their refusal to recognize the state-backed Macedonian Orthodox Church.
"It is ridiculous that they are trying to silence me, in this age of the internet and mass communication," he said recently. However "when they hit the shepherd, they expect the sheep to run away. But church history is paradoxical, as, the more the church is persecuted, the more followers it gets," Vraniskovski was quoted as saying by F18News, the news agency of human rights group Forum 18.
QUESTIONS ABOUT STATE
He has said that to "imprison an archbishop of a church in the 21st century – merely for serving his people" raises serious questions about the system and the state. In his phone conversation with Mitreva, Foreign Minister Drakovic stressed that "although of Macedonian nationality and citizenship, he has a right to be in canonic unity with the Serbian Orthodox Church," Makfax reported. [This] "cannot be ruled by the court as a crime. Let the bishops and priests solve the conflict, which they produced", the minister reportedly said.
Human rights activists believe jailing the bishop could undermine Macedonia’s efforts to join Western organizations such as the European Union. (With Stefan J. Bos, BosNewsLife Research and reports from Macedonia).
