Amfilohije's honorary and liturgical title was: His Grace, Archbishop of Cetinje, Metropolitan of Montenegro and the Littoral, of Zeta, Brda (the Highlands) and the Skenderija, and the Exarch of the Holy Throne of Peć.

[12] A week before political elections in Serbia, on 6 December 1990, Serbian President Slobodan Milošević attempted to get control of the SOC through supporting his preferred candidates such as Amfilohije for patriarch.

[14] At Cetinje in December 1990 public protests by people against his appointment as metropolitan followed, due to the reputation of Amfilohije as a Serb nationalist and his denial of a separate Montenegrin identity.

[16] At the time, the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro had re-emerged as a spiritual and political force following the fall of communism and the subsequent dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1992).

[1] In Montenegro, new churches exhibited relics of martyrs that had died at the Jasenovac concentration camp to remind parishioners of the suffering that Serbs had undergone in the World War II.

[1] Amfilohije campaigned to rehabilitate Nikolaj Velimirović, an interwar Serbian Orthodox cleric imprisoned by the Axis powers during the World War II whom he viewed as a martyr.

[5][14] His appointment as metropolitan coincided with the rise of Slobodan Milošević and the mobilisation of the Serb population in Yugoslavia that was supported by the SOC, along with an increase in Serbian nationalist sentiment.

[28][29] He and several other SOC bishops claimed that the responsibility of Yugoslavia's problems were based upon genocidal tendencies among Yugoslav ethnic groups and the West, with its modernity and ideologies such as communism, individualism, materialism and secularism.

[30] Amfilohije made comments on the situation in Kosovo and claimed that expansionist countries of the Catholic and Protestant West and Muslim East were "an insane wind trying ceaselessly to extinguish this sacred lamp", defined as Serbia.

[36] In the early 1990s, Amfilohije and Bishop Vasilije Kačavenda deepened religious and ethnic divisions during the Yugoslav Wars and alleged that a global conspiracy existed against the SOC.

[37] Amfilohije stated that the "natural space" of the Serbs lay with the Orthodox East and that they needed to fight the Protestant and Catholic West and also Islam, as according to him "without death there will be no resurrection".

[39][18] The MOC attempted to characterise Amfilohije as a "dangerous fundamentalist" that wanted to impose the SOC upon all Orthodox Montenegrins and autocephalists viewed him as part of an "anti-Montenegrin" assimilation campaign.

[43] The Montenegrin opposition viewed Amfilohije and his supporters as agents of a "Greater Serbian project" and accused the metropolitan of wanting to maintain ecclesiastical control over all churches in Montenegro.

[39][40][20] During a 1990 interview with Serbian newspaper NIN, Amfilohije stated that Milošević should be "commended" as he understood "the vital interests of the Serb people" and that "if they continue as they started, the results will be very impressive.

[46] In anticipation of an invasion by Yugoslav troops of southern Croatia, the SOC, represented on the ground by Amfilohije conducted a religious ceremony (17 February 1991) in a historic Orthodox church on the Prevlaka peninsula on the Croatia-Montenegro border.

[47] During the siege of Dubrovnik, Amfilohije played the gusle (a stringed instrument) and sang verses to Yugoslav Montenegrin troops from the epic poem "Battle of Mojkovac".

[50] He was critical of what he viewed as Yugoslav government and European inaction toward Bosnian Serbs and the perceived danger they and the Orthodox faith in Bosnia faced from Muslim Bosniaks.

[4] Amfilohije supported the decision by the wartime Bosnian Serb leadership to reject the Vance–Owen peace plan which proposed to divide Bosnia into multiple cantons.

[39][18][20] Due to his opposition toward Milošević, Amfilohije for a short time found common ground with Milo Đukanović when in 1997 the Democratic Party of Socialists of Montenegro (DPS) became divided into pro- and anti-Milošević groups.

[54] In the late 1990s, Amfilohije, as head of the Montenegrin metropolitanate, was in charge of 160 clergy such as priests, monks and nuns that provided religious service to more than 90% of parishes and monasteries within Montenegro.

[22] Exposed to Catholic influence, Amfilohije has shifted his position about the "evil essence" of people in the West and has begun to distinguish between a "bad" secular and "good" anti-secular Europe.

[61][62] The symbolic action aimed at demonstrating the dominance of the SOC over other religions and to support the Serbian character of Montenegro, the event also revealed the close links between Amfilohije and the army.

[61] The action was criticised in Montenegro by public figures such as Andrej Nikolaidis who stated there never was a church in that location and Amfilohije received negative press from a part of Montenegrin media of appropriating the site for one faith to the exclusion of others and generating inter religious disharmony.

[65][66] During May 2011, Amfilohije was charged with hate speech and underwent a court trial in Podgorica, due to comments made toward people who wanted to remove a church located at Mount Rumija.

[67] At the time Amfilohije criticised the Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić and President Boris Tadić as "traitors who did not want the army to defend Kosovo".

[80] Some church officials were attacked by the police (including Bishop Metodije, Amfilohije's deputy)[81] and a number of journalists, opposition activists and protesting citizens were arrested.

[94] Despite to the Montenegrin government's bans on mass public gatherings due to the spread of COVID-19 virus, in front of the Podgorica Cathedral, there were thousands of believers present, as well as heads of the Orthodox Church in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, Ukraine and Albania, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Bar and Islamic communities in Montenegro and Serbia, the funeral was also attended by a large number of political leaders from Montenegro and neighboring countries.

[102][103] Those attending the funeral, which was held on 1 November, also did not keep their social distance and agreed to abide by the tradition of walking up to an open casket to kiss a deceased Eastern Orthodox cleric's hands and forehead.

[18] As a divisive figure Amfilohije was portrayed by Montenegrin pro independence parties, some intellectuals and the MOC as a "war criminal" and "fundamentalist" causing conflict among fellow citizens.

[106][105][54] In the rivalry between Amfilohije of the SOC and Metropolitan Miraš Dedeić of the canonically unrecognized MOC have often exchanged personal slurs and both have become representatives of the Serb and Montenegrin factions within the country.