The truth about Theotokos Brainska Monastery

Protosyncellos Varnava (Dimitrijević) from the above mentioned monastery, which is actually uncanonical, published an article on an anti-church website that states "Bishop Atanasije committed a terrible slander" by calling this monastery "uncanonical".

For the sake of information and the true and complete truth, it is necessary to know that the history of this monastery is not controversial but its present status, which is actually uncanonical. Varnava in his article speaks of "canonical bureaucratic pettiness" above which "it is necessary to rise". The Bishop Administrator has resolved the uncanonical status of this monastery because although Bishop Artemije in principle obtained the approval of Bishop Irinej of Niš, the monastery it is not a dependency of a monastery (or we would have to know whose and from which original monastery and competent church authority it received a blessing) nor a staurophigial monastery, because for either status it would have to be approved by the Patriarch, who alone has the right to a staurophigial institution or the Synod/Assembly to extend the jurisdiction of one Diocese into another (it is not necessary to cite the fundamental 34th Apostolic Canon and many other holy canons that define Orthodox ecclesiology) .

Therefore, one of the first acts of Bishop Administrator Atanasije was to transfer the uncanonical placed monasteries Brainski near Medveđa and Pločnik near Kuršumlija to the Bishop of Niš who is competent for that area (E.br.služb. 8, 14 February 2010). Thus, protosyncellos Varnava either does not know or does not want to know the canonical order of the Orthodox Church (the order that his previous Bishop Artemije grossly violated).

Info-Service of the Diocese of Raška-Prizren and Kosovo-Metohija
Prizren-Gračanica, 23 April 2010