Minor Letnica: (Re)Locating the Tradition of Shared Worship in North Macedonia

Authors

Ksenia Trofimova

DOI

10.32436/2475-6423.1076

Abstract

This paper addresses trajectories of historical and devotional continuity of the annual pilgrimage to a Marian shrine. It analyzes the ways in which traditional worship of the Catholic Church in Letnica (Kosovo)—a major regional sanctuary of the former Yugoslavia—is relocated and replicated in a small chapel of St. Joseph in Skopje (North Macedonia). Both sites have been for a long period of time institutionally connected and shared by followers of different religious traditions (Catholic and Orthodox devotees, and especially by Muslims). Drawing upon fieldwork carried out in Macedonia and Serbia between 2014-2019, I focus on the processes of social construction of the Catholic chapel as a holy site where today Muslims from local Roma communities are the predominant worshipers. I look at how the established scenarios of the organized shared worship in the Letnica church, being localized in an altered social context, are reconstructed, adjusted and regulated by divergent social actors through transmission of official and personal narratives, as well as through devotional practices.

Recommended Citation

Trofimova, Ksenia (2020) "Minor Letnica: (Re)Locating the Tradition of Shared Worship in North Macedonia," Journal of Global Catholicism: Vol. 4: Iss. 2, Article 4. p.68-107.
DOI: 10.32436/2475-6423.1076
Available at: https://crossworks.holycross.edu/jgc/vol4/iss2/4