Archimandrite Jovan Radosavljevic reposed in the Lord

At his request, Archimandrite Jovan Radosavljevic will be buried in the Lelic Monastery. The Holy Liturgy will be served on 10 April 2021 at 9AM, while the memorial service for the dead will be served at 12PM.

Archimandrite Jovan (Radosavljevic) was born on May 19, 1927 in the village of Lelic near Valjevo, to pious parents Radomir and Darinka. At his baptism, he got the name Milisav. There were seven children in the family: Katarina, Nikola, Stevan, Vucko, Milovan, Kristivoje and Milisav, of whom Nikola and Kristivoje died in early childhood. The family lived modestly, but piously and prayerfully. All members of the family attended the home prayers, standing in front of the house icons and praying, in whispers, in their own words. "That our house prayer in prayerful silence and conversation with God remained in my memory with a feeling of a special grace of peace," Archimandrite Jovan remembers.

Father Radomir died suddenly, when little Milisav was only three years old. The mother was left with five children, who helped her with housework and field work to the best of their ability.

After finishing the fourth grade of primary school in his native village, Milisav went to Kraljevo to Bishop Nikolaj at the age of eleven. He stayed there for a short time, and then the Bishop took him to the monastery of Zica, where he became a monastery student, then a novice. The spiritual relationship with Saint Bishop Nikolaj, then realized, will become the cornerstone of the monastic life of Archimandrite Jovan. After the German bombing and burning of the monastery of Zica in 1941, most of the fraternity retreated to the mountain Stolovi and the monastery hut, and then to Studenica. In the summer of 1944, due to the war, Milisav went to the Vujan monastery, where, on the eve of the arrival of the partisans, the theologian Gojko Stojcevic, the later patriarch Pavle, also arrived. Acquaintance with the future patriarch and the years spent with him will leave an indelible spiritual mark on Milisav.

After a year, the whole fraternity moved to the monastery of the Annunciation near Ovcar Banja. Milisav remained there until 1947, when he went to serve a two-year military service. After returning from the army, he settled in the monastery of Raca near Bajina Basta, where the former fraternity of the monastery of the Annunciation was located at that time. During that period, his spiritual relationship with Saint Ava Justin of Celije was established.

On the feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, in 1950, Milisav was ordained a monk in the monastery of Raca in a small scheme, with the blessing of Metropolitan Joseph of Skopje, who was the administrator of Zica diocese at the time. The act of monasticism was performed by the abbot Julijan (Knezevic), and the hierodeacon Pavle Stojcevic brought him to the monastery as a spiritual father, giving him the monastic name Jovan, in honor of St. John the Baptist.

In Raca, monk Jovan finished one grade of high school, and in 1957, when Archimandrite Pavle became Bishop of Raska and Prizren, he finished the other three grades. In 1966, he enrolled at the Faculty of Theology in Belgrade, where he met and became spiritually close to the young theologian Mirko Bulovic, the later Bishop Irinej of Backa. During his studies, the Holy Synod of Bishops appointed him a teacher at the Monastic School in the Ostrog Monastery. He graduated from the Faculty of Theology in 1971 and went to Greece to study for a postgraduate degree at the University of Athens. At the end of 1974, at the invitation of the Holy Synod, he accepted the duty of the director of the Monastic School in Ostrog, which was later moved to Dalmatia, to Krka Monastery. After a year of working in it, he continued teaching at the Prizren Theological Seminary in 1978/1979. He took the professor's exam in Belgrade in 1983. He retired as a professor of theology in 2001. He left behind a valuable written testimony about the history and life of our Church, which includes about fifty titles.

Archimandrite Jovan performed the duty of a clergyman in the seminaries in Belgrade, Karlovac and Kragujevac. From 2005 to 2016, he lived in the monastery of the Annunciation near Ovcar Banja, while he usually spent the winter periods in Novi Sad, with the Bishop Irinej of Backa. He was transferred to the Jezevica monastery in 2015, and the following year to the Raca monastery near Bajina Basta. However, due to humidity, cold and poor health, he was sent to a more favorable climate area near Vranje, to the monastery of St. Stephen in Gornje Zapsko, where, thanks to the kindness of Bishop Pahomije of Vranje and the sisterhood of the monastery, he spent the last five years of his life.

During the first week of Lent in 2021, Archimandrite Jovan fell ill with an infection caused by the COVID-19 and was placed at the Infectious Diseases Clinic of the Clinical Center of Vojvodina, where he died on April 8. We thank all the doctors and medical staff who helped him in the last days of his life.

At his request, he will be buried in the Lelic monastery, and the details of the funeral will be announced later.

Eternal memory to you and the Kingdom of Heaven, our dear Father John!