BELGRADE, Serbia — More than a million people traveled to the Church of Saint Sava over the past several weeks to witness a holy relic of the Virgin Mary, a piece of a belt she wore when pregnant with Jesus Christ.
The belt, on display for 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the last couple of weeks, was flown in from Mount Athos in Greece, where it is normally kept — the first time in centuries the relic had been returned to Serbia.
Holy relic of the Virgin Mary’s belt in the Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade, Serbia, on May 23, 2026. (Jon Kahn/Breitbart News)
VIDEO: Thousands line up to view the holy relic of the Virgin Mary’s belt at the Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade, Serbia:
Orthodox Church officials, per a Serbian government official, formally estimated that more than 1.1 million people visited the Church of Saint Sava during the display of the relic, considered one of the holiest in Christianity.
The Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade, Serbia, on May 23, 2026. (Jon Kahn/Breitbart News)
“She made it by hand and wore it when she was pregnant with the baby Jesus,” Nemanja Stavorich, the Serbian Minister of European Integration, told Breitbart News during a tour of the Church of Saint Sava.
“It’s a very special occasion for us because for 650 years, this belt wasn’t in Serbia,” Bozidar Lijeskic, a Church official who gave Breitbart News a tour of the Church of Saint Sava, said. “It’s actually one of the holiest and most prized and venerated possessions of the whole of Mount Athos.”
Exterior of the Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade, Serbia, on May 23, 2026. (Jon Kahn/Breitbart News)
Breitbart News visited the church as well during our trip to Belgrade to interview President Aleksandar Vucic — an interview that caught the attention of U.S. President Donald Trump. Vucic praised Trump during the interview, saying that because he is “pragmatic” and “rational,” Trump is the most popular American politician by far in Serbia — and the president posted that article on Truth Social.
The Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade, Serbia, on May 23, 2026. (Jon Kahn/Breitbart News)
Right after interviewing Vucic, Serbian officials took Breitbart News on a private tour of the Church of Saint Sava, and we got to see the relic of the Virgin Mary during the tour. The church itself is magnificent and was built by the Serbs over the course of more than a century as a way to sort of replace the Hagia Sophia, the spectacular church in Istanbul that was turned into a Mosque when Muslims conquered what is now modern-day Turkey during the rise of the Ottoman Empire.
The Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade, Serbia, on May 23, 2026. (Jon Kahn/Breitbart News)
The high-rise front doors of the church have engraved on them 24 different languages of welcoming prayers. “Basically, for every person coming from any part of the world approaching the church, the first thing they will feel and also notice will be the prayer either in their own language or in a language that they can understand,” Lijeskic told Breitbart News as he began the tour outside of the church. “You get an immediate feeling of warmth coming inside.”
Lijeskic said that Saint Sava, for whom the Church is named, “is, for Serbian people, one of the most important as well as most venerated Saints in our spiritual heritage.”
The Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade, Serbia, on May 23, 2026. (Jon Kahn/Breitbart News)
“He was born in 1175 in a royal family in Serbia — his father was a great unifier, and I would say a great duke of Serbia,” Lijeskic said. “When I say unifier, I mean he unified the Serbian territories and municipalities that formed into a state of Serbia. Saint Sava, who was his third and youngest son, wasn’t so devoted to be any royalty or prince or whatever. But he was very devoted to and interested in the Church and Christianity. So when he was 17, he decided to follow some Russian Orthodox monks who were traveling across Serbia and going towards Mount Athos in Greece. The moment he found himself there, he decided to become an Orthodox monk, and as you know, that’s officially leaving any opportunity for the Crown, any opportunity for the royalty, as well as his personal family and any kind of wealth. So he stayed there and started learning about this deep spirituality and life, and miraculously, his father joined him several years after that. So he renounced the throne of Serbia, stepped back from the throne of Serbia, and gave it to his middle son, and started following his youngest son and became a monk.”
The Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade, Serbia, on May 23, 2026. (Jon Kahn/Breitbart News)
When Saint Sava’s father died, Lijeskic said that the situation in Serbia “started to collide in a little bit of an unpleasant way.” Since Saint Sava’s father had handed control of the kingdom over to the middle brother instead of the eldest brother, the nation almost descended into civil war, but Saint Sava returned to Serbia with his father’s relics and made peace between his older brothers. “The second-born son who was given the leadership of Serbia actually became the first king of Serbia,” Lijeskic said. “And during Saint Sava’s stay in Serbia, he started to build hospitals and schools — the first educational institutions, as well as the churches and the monasteries. He basically put the educational system of Serbia on the map of the known world. So that’s why he’s considered now the greatest enlightener of the Serbian people, the great educator of the Serbian people.”
The Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade, Serbia, on May 23, 2026. (Jon Kahn/Breitbart News)
In 1219, Lijeskic added, Saint Sava made the Serbian church independent of Constantinople and “became the first archbishop for the Serbian church.”
“So to summarize this entire life story of Saint Sava and why he is so important to our Serbian people, for us to dedicate to him this tremendous church, it’s because he’s the founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church as well as the first Serbian Archbishop,” Lijeskic said.
The Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade, Serbia, on May 23, 2026. (Jon Kahn/Breitbart News)
Construction on the church, the fourth biggest Orthodox Church in the world, began in 1935 and took decades — until 2004 for the exterior and until 2020 for the interior — to complete. The construction stopped and started at different points throughout history, notably during the communist era of Yugoslavia, but now it boasts what Lijeskic told Breitbart News during the tour is the single biggest piece of artwork in the world, a series of mosaic images throughout the inside of the building.
Mosaic in the Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade, Serbia, on May 23, 2026. (Jon Kahn/Breitbart News)
Mosaic in the Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade, Serbia, on May 23, 2026. (Jon Kahn/Breitbart News)
“This is the biggest mosaic art piece in the world,” Lijeskic said. “It’s placed on a surface of more than 17,000 square meters, and if you ask yourself if this is real gold, it is. It’s 24 karat gold placed in between two layers of glass. The rest of the depictions of the saints and parables and biblical stories are made of natural colors of stone, marble, glass — all different kinds of minerals. For example, the black ones are made from the volcanic glass — obsidian — and for the Byzantine blue, it’s made of lapis lazuli. Miraculously, too, the mosaic was done in only five years. We started the project in 2012, but the artists needed two years to just take the measurements and do the entire logistics. But then, it only took five years to build — so these are relatively new. It was actually completed seven years back from now, so in 2019.”
In total, the mosaics include millions of pieces of gold and stones throughout the church and make images of Jesus Christ and a number of Orthodox saints and biblical figures.