Serbian Archbishop Starts Serving Prison Sentence

(BosNewsLife) – Despite international protests, Macedonia ‘s Serbian Orthodox Archbishop Jovan Vraniskovski was summoned at a local detention facility Tuesday, July 19, to start serving an 18-months prison sentence for refusing to accept the authority of the government-backed Macedonian Orthodox Church, news reports said. The 39-year old Vraniskovski, who was previously sentenced to five days solitary confinement for baptizing his sister’s grandchild, had till midnight to check in at the prison of his home town Bitola, reported Makfax, a Macedonian independent news agency. He received the summon for serving prison time at a police station in Bitola, after he was detained at the border crossing Medzitlija on his way back from Greece, Makfax said. It came as a setback for the dissident bishop, his co-workers explained. “[Bishop] Jovan expected postponement of the sentence by August 2 [because] the Head of [the] Serbian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Pavle, is due to hand over personally the thomos marking the autonomous Ohrid Orthodox Archbishopric,” Makfax quoted one of the monks of Vraniskovski’s church as saying.