UJEDINJENJE SRPSKE PRAVOSLAVNE CRKVE I USPOSTAVUANJE SRPSKE PATRIJARŠIJE U JUGOSLAVIJI
UNIFICATION OF THE SERBIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH AND ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SERBIAN PATRIARCHY IN YUGOSLAVIA

Summary/Abstract: The forming of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918, encompassed all Serbs into a common state and simultaneously created a basis for uniting the Serbian church, previously divided among six regions. The first step in what became rather a long process, was for the bishops of the various ecclesiastical regions to come to a decision on the necessity of unification. Following that, permission had to be procured from the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople, under whose jurisdiction came the eparchies in Old Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Dalmatia, On 12 September, 1920 the Serbian Patriarchate was formally established. Two months later, the first Serbian patriarch, Dimitrije, was chosen and enthroned in the Orthodox Cathedral in Belgrade. The ceremony of the Patriarch’s enthronement in Pec was carried out on 28 August, 1924 in order to mark a symbolic continuity between the enthronement of the first patriarch during the time of the Nemanjic family and that of the first patriarch after 1766, of the Karađorđević reign. King Aleksandar played an important part in the unification of the Serbian Orthodox Church, although his motives were purely political and ethnic. One of his ambitions was to make of the Orthodox faith a cohesive force to bridge the perpetual political differences rife among the Serbs. Another was to have the Serbian Church assume the role of the Russian Orthodox Church prior to its destruction by the Bolsheviks of the bulwark of the Orthodox faith.

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