Dečan, Kosovo, March 21, 2024
Photo: eparhija-prizren.com
A 24-year battle over a 60-acre plot of land surrounding the Serbian Orthodox Visoki Dečani Monastery in Kosovo has finally come to a just end.
The legal dispute began in 2000 and seemed to have concluded in 2016 when the Kosovo Constitutional Court recognized the 14th-century monastery’s ownership of the land, but Kosovo authorities simply refused to implement the ruling, worried it would create a “chain reaction in which the Church would have to be granted compromises in other issues as well.”
This stance did nothing to help Church-state relations in Kosovo, and the monastery refused to receive the Prime Minister as long as the Court’s ruling remained unenforced.
Last week, PM Albin Kurti said Kosovo must implement the ruling, as the price for Kosovo joining the Council Europe.
And yesterday, the Diocese of Raška and Prizren announced that the entire matter has finally come to an end, with the monastery being legally recognized as the owner of the 60 acres:
The Raška-Prizren Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church confirms that the authorized representative of the Visoki Dečani Monastery today obtained an official cadastral extract from the Central Cadastre of Kosovo in Pristina, including all properties of the Dečani Monastery, encompassing the 24 hectares recognized to the monastery by the decision of the Constitutional Court of Kosovo in 2016.
Based on the cadastral extract, we can confirm that the decision of the Constitutional Court from 2016 has been executed and that in the Cadastre, the monastery is recognized as the owner of the property that was previously disputed.
We can conclude that the long-standing legal process surrounding the 24 hectares of land of the Visoki Dečani Monastery has finally been resolved.
The Diocese and the Monastery of Visoki Dečani extend special thanks to the Special Rapporteur, Mrs. Dora Bakoyannis, and to everyone else who contributed to the successful resolution of this long-standing dispute.
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