PARMA, Ohio — A sign went up on the grass across from Saint Sava Cathedral on Sunday morning, November 1. In English and in Serbian, so no one could miss it, it said: "Chetniks built this church. You can't have it."
Start with the word "you." Who is it talking to? The bishop? The Patriarch? The families walking in for Liturgy? That morning the church the sign says "you can't have" was full. People were praying in it. The sign stood outside on the grass.
Then take the claim itself. Builders don't keep what they build. The masons who build a hospital don't own the hospital. The crew that frames a house doesn't move in when it's done. Anyone who has worked on a job site knows this. You build it, you hand over the keys, and you go home. A church works the same way, only more so. The people who built it handed it to God.
Chetniks did help build Saint Sava. So did many others: families who gave their savings, men who spent their weekends on the work, women who cooked for one fundraiser after another. Not one of them built it so they could stand on the road one day and tell someone else to keep out. Many of them have gone to their rest. They are being used in a fight they never asked to be part of.
The sign also talks as if every Chetnik is standing outside with it. They aren't. There were Chetniks inside the cathedral that morning too. They weren't protesting. They were at Liturgy, praying, in the church the sign says belongs to them. The sign doesn't speak for them, and it doesn't speak for the men who built it.
Nobody owns a church. It belongs to God, and anyone who believes in Him and wants to be near Him can walk in. That has been true at Saint Sava since the first Liturgy. It is still true today.
The men who built Saint Sava gave it away gladly. A sign telling the faithful "you can't have it" doesn't honor them. It takes back what they gave.
Sources
- Photograph of the sign, Sunday, November 1, 2026, supplied to Orthodox Integrity (faces obscured).