14.11.2023.
10th anniversary of reinstatement of religious service in SAF celebrated
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Miloš Vučević, alongside Chief of the Serbian Armed Forces General Staff, General Milan Mojsilović and His Holiness Porfirije, Serbian Patriarch, attended tonight at the Central Military Club in Belgrade a ceremony to mark the 10th anniversary of the reinstatement of religious service in the Serbian Armed Forces.
On the suggestion of the Chief of the General Staff, the Minister of Defence awarded military commemorative medals for contribution to the defence system to the most deserving chaplains to mark November 12 – Religious Service Day. Speaking about the importance and history of religious service, Head of the Human Resources Directorate of the General Staff, Brigadier General Savo Iriškić, said that the religious service in the Serbian Armed Forces was founded on the Law on the Armed Forces.
- This Law allows members of our armed forces the fundamental human right to the freedom of religion, and by adopting the regulation on the performance of religious service in the Serbian Armed Forces in 2011, the practice of religion was authorized within the military organization. The history of the reinstated religious service in the Serbian Armed Forces begins on August 1, 2013, when the first military priests, an imam and a chaplain, entered the structure of the Ministry of Defence and the Serbian Armed Forces, starting their practice of religion - said General Iriškić.According to him, the beginnings of religious service in our military can be traced back to the performance of religious service in the Army of the Principality of Serbia, which included a certain number of military imams and rabbis, who performed their duties on an equal footing with Orthodox military priests, and all recognized churches and religious communities had the right to a religious leader.
The ceremony was attended by members of the collegia of the Minister of Defence and the Chief of the General Staff, Chief Secretary to the Deputy Prime Minister’s cabinet Žarko Mićin, Chief Secretary to the President’s Military Cabinet, Brigadier General Predrag Kraljević, representatives of religious communities and numerous guests.The Religious Service Day - November 12, commemorates the year 1839, when the Military Law was passed in the Army of the Principality of Serbia, which defined the performance of religious service in the army for the first time.
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