PARMA, Ohio — On Sunday morning, September 20, a sign propped on the grass along Ridgewood Drive near Saint Sava Serbian Orthodox Cathedral read "Our children deserve an answer." A second sign next to it carried the same words in Serbian. The photograph was taken at 9:49 a.m., as the parish gathered for the Divine Liturgy. The sign is right. The children of this parish are owed an answer. It is owed by the adults who put up the sign.
I. The sign
Protest signs have gone up on Sunday mornings since the transfer of Fr. Dragoslav Kosić in October 2025. Sunday's set included "We will never give up. Justice will prevail!", "Faith over fear," and a request to passing drivers to honk in support. Those signs argue about a bishop, a board, and a transfer. The sign about the children does not. It speaks for people who cannot speak for themselves, and who had no part in any decision that brought their parents to the roadside.
A sign that speaks for children puts a question on the table about who has been deciding for them. For eleven months, the answer has been in plain view.
II. What the children lost
Before the dispute, the children of Saint Sava had the Serbian school, where they were taught the language of their parents and grandparents. They had folk dancing, where they learned the kolo. They had the Divine Liturgy on Sunday and Holy Communion, the ordinary shape of a Serbian childhood in a diaspora parish.
After the transfer, families aligned with the protest group stopped bringing their children to the Serbian school. They stopped bringing them to folk dancing. Many stopped bringing them to church at all. The teachers of the Serbian school walked out.
No bishop ordered any of this. No Episcopal Act, no decision of the Temporary Board of Trustees, and no instruction from the parish priest removed a child from a classroom, a rehearsal, or the chalice. Every one of those absences began with a choice made by an adult.
An open letter circulated under the signature "Faithful of Saint Sava, Cleveland" accused the Church of erasing the parish's Serbian heritage. The Serbian school is where that heritage is handed to the next generation, one word at a time. Folk dancing is where it is handed on one step at a time. The Church did not take the heritage from the children. The children were taken from the heritage.
III. Who owes the answer
A seven-year-old does not follow Episcopal Acts or appeals to the Holy Synod. What a child knows is that Serbian school stopped, the dancing stopped, and Sunday stopped meaning church. When that child asks why, the question will not reach Belgrade or New York. It will reach a mother or a father, which is where it belongs.
The honest answer will have to include what happened on December 7, 2025. That morning, before the Divine Liturgy, the new parish priest, Fr. Dragan Vuković, walked out to the protest group and invited everyone inside, with no conditions. The invitation was refused, and the reply given to him, on video, was "Oni nisu naši": they are not ours.
This publication noted in April that the adults responsible for the parish's children were the ones who had chosen to keep them outside, and that no child had been turned away from the cathedral. Five months later, nothing about that has changed. What is new is that the absence of the children, which the adults chose, is now written on a sign and held up to passing traffic as a grievance against the Church.
A child cannot be kept from Serbian school, from the kolo and from Holy Communion for the better part of a year and then be made the reason for the protest. The sign asks the Church to answer for a decision the Church did not make.
IV. The open door
The Divine Liturgy is served at Saint Sava Cathedral every Sunday. Fr. Dragan Vuković serves it. The Temporary Board of Trustees governs the parish under the Diocesan Rulebook. The protest group's appeal to the Holy Synod remains undecided, and on August 31 the group said publicly that it would abide by the Synod's decision when it comes. None of that has closed a door to a child. The cathedral was open on the morning the sign went up, as it has been every Sunday since the dispute began.
The children deserve an answer. The people who owe it were standing beside the sign.
Sources
- Photograph of the protest on Ridgewood Drive, Parma, Ohio, taken 9:49 a.m., Sunday, September 20, 2026. Original held by Orthodox Integrity; faces obscured for publication.
- Video taken outside Saint Sava Cathedral, December 7, 2025, published by Orthodox Integrity in „Oni nisu naši": Tri reči koje su razotkrile sve.
- Reject the Invitation, Blame the Church (Orthodox Integrity, April 10, 2026).
- Statement posted to protester social media, August 31, 2026. Screenshot held by Orthodox Integrity.
- Episcopal Acts Nos. 425, 426 and 427 of Bishop Irinej of Washington–New York and Eastern America, dated October 28, 2025.