Law enforcement in Podgorica took several priests and citizens to the police station to ask them about their gatherings in front of religious institutions, authorities told Vijesti.

Vijesti reported that the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro, bishop Metropolitan Amfilohije Radovic, was among them.

The news website reported that Radovic taken while he was at a church in the Podgorica neighbourhood of Zlatica, and that priests who were at the Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ, Mirceta Sljivancanin, Velibor Dzomic and Branko Vujacic, were also taken to the police station along with him.  

On March 22, Montenegro’s Government introduced a ban on performing religious rites in churches with the presence of believers in an attempt to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. T

his does not mean religious institutions are closed, but the measure “obliges religious communities to perform rituals and other activities without the presence of citizens.”