Rakocevic after the attempted takeover of the church in Rakitnice: We cannot give up on a single stone

The church near Podujevo is a precedent that cannot pass in this manner and must be stopped, journalist and writer Zivojin Rakocevic said after the recent break-in and misuse of the Serbian Orthodox Church facility in Rakitnice by a fake priest from Albania.

Rakocevic points out that the Church of St. Archangel Michael in Rakitnice was destroyed in 1999, desecrated, and then secretly restored by local authorities and the Albanians, who used it to shelter sheep.

"The third phase is that this church is now taken over, and it was taken over by the alleged priest from Albania, but with the full consent of the institutions in the Municipality of Podujevo to simply take over churches in this way", Rakocevic emphasizes.

He emphasizes that there are hundreds, even thousands of such objects, churches, church sites, and hermitages, located on the territory of Kosovo, and they are "our legitimate property".

"We cannot give up even a single stone that is ours and represents a sacred place for us. The essence is that this is the first kind of takeover, and the international community must urgently react and stop these evil processes that will turn into a permanent disaster, we will be faced with such takeovers in tens and hundreds of villages where our sanctuaries exist", he said.

Rakocevic recalls that after March 17, 2004, one could hear the statement from some liberal Albanians, as well as from circles of the international community, that the Albanians would not demolish Orthodox churches if there were Orthodox priests from Albania in them.

"That is a very dangerous, evil intention and the church in Podujevo is a precedent that cannot pass in this manner and must be stopped. A legitimate canonical priest of the Eparchy of Raska and Prizren and the Serbian Orthodox Church must enter it", Rakocevic stated.

Recall that on November 28, a group of people, along with the self-proclaimed and fake priest Nikolla Xhufka, a citizen of the Republic of Albania, broke into the Church of St. Archangel Michael in the village of Rakitnice, Municipality of Podujevo, to allegedly perform a church ritual.

They then placed a padlock on the church's entrance, which was removed today, after which a liturgy was held in the Church of St. Archangel Michael.

The liturgy was served with the blessing of the Bishop of Raska and Prizren, Teodosije, by the Abbot of the Visoki Decani Monastery, Archimandrite Sava, in co-celebration with the responsible parish priest, Protoiereus Stanisa Arsic, as stated in the announcement of the Eparchy of Raska and Prizren.