Belgrade, December 11, 2024
Photo: spc.rs
The Serbian capital needs dozens more churches, says the primate of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
His Holiness Patriarch Porfirije of Serbia addressed the issue during the recent consecration of bells at the Church of St. John Vladimir in Belgrade’s Medaković District.
“According to European standards, Belgrade needs at least 100 churches,” he said, adding that he believes other Belgrade residents, like himself, feel heartache when seeing some people protest and object to initiatives to build churches according to the needs of the faithful.
This statement has brought attention to the gap between the city’s urban development and the spiritual needs of Belgrade’s residents, reports the Serbian Orthodox Church.
According to data from several years ago, Belgrade has 62 religious buildings, including a mosque and a synagogue, with several Orthodox churches under construction.
“To understand the real need for planning new Orthodox churches in Belgrade, we need to look at the mismatch between planning and city development over the last 80 years,” says Deacon Miroslav D. Nikolić, architect of the Belgrade-Karlovci Archdiocese.
In the capital before World War II, in 1939, external construction work on the Church of St. Mark was completed. Due to war events, work was interrupted, and this church was only completed and consecrated in 1948.
Under communist rule, no Orthodox churches were built in Belgrade for the next 40 years. The first one built after World War II was the Church of the Synaxis of Serbian Saints in Karaburma, consecrated on November 13, 1988, which even then was sized more like a village church. Only a decade later, on May 31, 1998, the second post-war church was built and consecrated, dedicated to St. John Vladimir in the Medaković District. At that time, Patriarch Pavle was on the throne of the Serbian Orthodox Church, during whose time construction began on 29 churches, many of which were completed.
“In those five decades, many smaller suburban settlements grew into large municipalities,” says Dcn. Nikolić, but the city’s urban development and planning projects didn’t keep pace with the population’s needs for Orthodox church construction. The planned positioning of schools, shops, markets, and other infrastructure didn’t recognize people’s spiritual needs.
According to current urban planning standards, which dictate optimal distances for public facilities in settlements, a radius of .5 miles or 10-15 minutes walking distance is considered the optimal range for citizen access. These conditions also dictate the need for planning new locations for church construction.
Dcn. Nikolić emphasized that most new churches were built in Belgrade’s suburbs, so residents of many urban Belgrade neighborhoods still live several miles away from the nearest church.
The Russian Orthodox Church has the same goal for its population centers. In Moscow in particular, more than 12 dozen churches have been built since 2010, with another 200 under construction.
The aim is to ensure every resident of Moscow has a church within walking distance.
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