To His All-Holiness
Archbishop of Constantinople, New Rome, and
Ecumenical Patriarch
His All-Holiness Bartholomew I

Your All-Holiness,

In a time of great trials for Orthodox conciliarity and the unity of the Church, the Montenegrin Orthodox Church—together with its clergy and faithful people—recognizes with profound respect the historic role of the Mother Church of Constantinople and Your personal, decisive mission in its contemporary realization. With gratitude and hope, we regard Your archpastoral ministry as an organic continuation of the vision and work of the blessed Patriarchs Athenagoras I and Demetrios I, who laid into the very foundations of ecclesial life the ideals of reconciliation, dialogue, and conciliar unity.

We strongly support Your tireless ecumenical efforts and Your steadfast commitment to inter-Christian dialogue, recognizing in them a path toward a credible and living witness to the love of Christ in the contemporary world. In You, we see not only the first in honor, but also a true shepherd of the conciliar conscience of Orthodoxy—one who, in the spirit of the Holy Canons and the Tradition of the Church, preserves the balance between truth and love, freedom and order, history and eschatology.

We address You at a time when, regrettably, we are once again witnessing attempts to discredit Your name, Your authority, and Your dignity through synchronized and perfidious campaigns, which, by all indications, are driven by structures of Russian security and church-political interests. The latest media narratives now being promoted even through the issue of the Montenegrin Orthodox Church aim to weaken You in Your historic decision to recognize the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Church, as well as in Your consistent defense of the canonical order in the Balkan, Baltic, and other regions.

As both the Montenegrin Orthodox Church and Montenegro itself have for decades been targets of the same centers of power, we feel a moral and spiritual obligation to address You—not only as an expression of support, but also as a testimony to our shared suffering under the same mechanisms of destabilization, disinformation, and the misuse of Orthodoxy for political purposes.

Your All-Holiness,

Allow me, on this occasion, to raise a profoundly personal, yet also ecclesial question—one that for decades has burdened the possibility of a just resolution of the church status in Montenegro. You know well that, at the time of the decision regarding my exclusion from the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, two accusations were brought against me: first, that I had joined the “sect of Antonije Abramović” without a canonical release, and second, that I had violated the canonical unity of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Here I wish to state this clearly, unequivocally, and in full historical truth: as a cleric of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, my priestly ministry and my canonical path did not take place within the jurisdiction of the Serbian Orthodox Church; consequently, the accusation of having “violated its unity” is canonically, historically, and legally unfounded.

Today, at the end of the ninth decade of my life, I stand before God and before the Church ready to re-examine all of my actions. If my greatest sin is that I stood at the head of the movement for the restoration of the autocephaly of the Montenegrin Orthodox Church and that I openly opposed the heresy of Greater-Serbian Svetosavlje ethnophyletism—which has been and remains a political instrument of the forced assimilation of Montenegrins and an attempt to erase the independence and statehood of Montenegro—then I am prepared to bear that cross to the very end.

If, as Your cleric, I have in any way transgressed against the Ecumenical Patriarchate, I desire that this become the subject of an open, truthful, and fraternal dialogue. And precisely for this reason, Your All-Holiness, I hereby declare my readiness to be summoned before the canonical court of the Ecumenical Patriarchate—something that has not occurred thus far—so that all accusations brought against me may be examined publicly, justly, impartially, and in the spirit of the Holy Canons.

For I am deeply convinced that behind these accusations there is often not a genuine concern for the canonical order, but rather the interest of those who wish to “defend” Orthodoxy—not from heresy, but from You and from me.

Please consider this letter, Your All-Holiness, both as an official appeal and as our formal petition to initiate a serious, canonically and historically grounded dialogue regarding the status of the Montenegrin Orthodox Church. To this end, we are prepared to form a multidisciplinary commission composed of canon lawyers, historians, jurists, and sociologists, which would present to the Ecumenical Patriarchate the true situation in Montenegro, including the systemic discrimination against non-Serbian Orthodox believers.

In this spirit, with filial devotion, we turn to Your paternal care, striving for full, clear, and unquestionable canonical unity with the Ecumenical Patriarchate. We firmly believe that under Your holy omophorion, through the wise and just exercise of the inalienable prerogatives of the Mother Church, it is possible to achieve a lasting and stable regulation of our status within the family of Orthodox Churches, in accordance with the order of ancient and contemporary patriarchal acts—to the joy of the Ecumenical Church and to the glory of the One God.

Our desire is that this matter not be resolved under pressure, threats, and propaganda, but in the spirit of truth, justice, and the canonical order, which has always been the foundation of the mission of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

With profound respect,

Cetinje, January 18, 2026

Archbishop of Cetinje and
Metropolitan of Montenegro
† Mihailo