SAINT BISHOP NIKOLAJ WAS THE MOST REVERED BISHOP OF THE 20TH CENTURY

PODGORICA, MAY 3 /SRNA/ - During a Holy Liturgy celebrated at the Cetinje Monastery on the feast day dedicated to Bishop Nikolaj, His Eminence Metropolitan Joanikije said that Saint Nikolaj Velimirović was the most revered bishop of the 20th century and a man of God.

“The most revered bishop both among us and other Christians in the 20th century. A great preacher of the Gospel of God. A great interpreter of Holy Scripture, a poet, and a great witness of Christ,” the Metropolitan said. Metropolitan Joanikije also reflected on the suffering of Saint Nikolaj Velimirović during the Second World War, when he was imprisoned in notorious camps, as well as on his interpretation of the works of Petar II Petrović Njegoš and his speech delivered in front of the Cetinje Monastery ahead of the transfer of Njegoš’s remains to Lovćen in 1925. “No one composed a more beautiful hymn either to Njegoš or to Montenegro. We should remember that as well, but what is most important is that Saint Nikolaj was a man of God. He passed away as an exile in America, yet at the same time became an enlightener of the American continent,” Metropolitan Joanikije concluded. The relics of Saint Nikolaj Velimirović, a bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church, were transferred to the village of Lelić near Valjevo on May 3, 1991. Bishop Nikolaj, a Serbian Orthodox theologian and preacher, was canonized as Saint Nikolaj of Ohrid and Žiča. He spent the First World War in the West as an envoy of the Serbian government, while during the Second World War, he was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. Between the two world wars, Saint Nikolaj Velimirović founded the Orthodox National Christian Community, known as the Bogomoljci Movement, to protect the people from aggressive sectarian propaganda. The Germans did not forgive the bishop for his role in the overthrow of the Tripartite Pact at the end of March 1941, so during the Second World War, immediately after occupying Yugoslavia, they confined him first to the Ljubostinja Monastery and later to the Vojlovica Monastery. Together with Patriarch Gavrilo Dožić, Bishop Saint Nikolaj Velimirović was imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp in 1944. After the liberation of Yugoslavia, Bishop Nikolaj remained in exile as an uncompromising opponent of the regime of Josip Broz Tito. He died in 1956 at a Russian monastery in the United States.