• PREDRAG MILICLook up at the wall and you can see Yugoslavia’s late autocratic leader Josip Broz Tito drowning in red fiery waves of hell – along with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, authors of the 1848 Communist Manifesto.
They are joined by Adam and Eve, current Montenegro politicians and people wearing Turkish turbans. Close by, rival church priests are being gobbled up by the huge jaws of an angry beast with pointed devil ears.
It’s fair to say the new brightly-coloured fresco in the Serbian Orthodox Church of Christ’s Resurrection in Montenegro’s capital of Podgorica has triggered controversy.
The Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro has often been involved in politics. The church’s hardline leader, Bishop Amfilohije Radovic, has, in the past, bitterly criticised the country’s pro-independence leadership and is not shy in openly denouncing Islam and Catholicism.
“I don’t see anything terrible in the symbolism of this fresco,” Branko Vujacic, a 36-year-old priest, told The Associated Press.
“To be honest, I am not one of those who see Marx and Tito on it and I don’t even remember how Marx looked like,” he added. “But I know that the fresco depicts the spirit of the time when the battle against God was fought.”
Unlike Vujacic, high-ranking Orthodox priest Velibor Dzomic clearly recognises the personalities.
“Yes, I see them all,” Dzomic said. “I see Tito, Marx, Engels and other enemies of Christ on that fresco. Everyone has the right to his own interpretation – some see them, some don’t.”
“Art is a miracle,” he added.
The fresco has also triggered controversy among believers, many of whom used to be passionate communists during Tito’s 1945-1980 autocratic rule.
“I don’t know what to say about the fresco,” said Zoran Savovic, a construction worker from Podgorica who described himself “a bigger Christian than a communist”.
“Tito’s time was a golden age for poor people and workers and it will never come back again,” Savovic said as he was leaving the church. “Personally, I would like to see the return of Tito’s era.” – Nampa-AP
