Biography of Episcopus electus of Dalmatia Nikodim

Church of Serbia – 19/6/17

The elected Bishop of Dalmatian Nikodim (Kosovic) was born on 15 April 1981 in Zadar, from parents who died in his early childhood.

He grew up together with his sister Danica, under the care of his uncle Nenad Kosovic, a well-known Benkovac professor and translator from Russian. He started Elementary school in Zadar, continued it in Benkovac in 1991 and ended at Dragocvet near Jagodina, Serbia, in 1995. Starting from 1991 he lived in the village Suljkovac n. Jagodina where he as a child, due to the civil war, went into exile, and in 1994 he together with his father and sister moved to live in Jagodina. He finished the Serbian Orthodox Seminary of Saint Arsenius of Srem in Sremski  Karlovci in 2000.

Shortly after graduating from the Seminary, Archimandrite Nikodim joined his spiritual father, Bishop Fotije (Sladojevic) of Dalmatia, in his Episcopal Palace in Sibenik, where he observed obedience of a novice up to 16/29. April 2001. It was on the Second Sunday after Easter that he received monastic vows in the monastery of Holy Archangel Michael of  Krka from the hands of his spiritual father, Bishop Fotije.

In this monastery, the Dalmatian Bishop Fotije ordained him as hierodeacon on 18/1. July 2001, on the Feast-day of the Holy Martyrs Leontius, Hypatius and Theodoul, and as a hieromonk on 16/29. December 2002, when the Church celebrates the Holy Prophet Haggai.

Fr. Nikodim graduated from the Theological Faculty of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2009. After completing his studies in Greece, he studied at the Pontifical Institute for Oriental Churches Eastern in Rome, where he in 2012 defended his master’s thesis in the discipline of the Canon Law on the topic “A pledge of faith in the Orthodox theology and in the Roman Catholic theology”. Since 2012  he is a PhD student at the Faculty of Canon Law at the Gregoriana University in Rome.

Bishop of Dalmatian Fotije appointed him, in 2012, as abbot of the monastery Krka, where he increased monastic brotherhood and made a significant contribution to the material and spiritual reconstruction of the monastery, as well as worked intensively in order to create conditions for the return of the monastery’s treasures. Elevated to the rank of Archimandrite on the feast of St. Michael the Archangel, the patron feast-day of the monastery Krka, 8/21. November 2013.

Arhimandrite Nikodim is a member of the Commission for Revision of the Constitution of the Serbian Orthodox Church instituted by the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church. He speaks fluently Greek and Italian and uses English in his research work.

At the regular meeting of the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church Fr. Nikodim was elected as Bishop of Dalmatia on 24 May 2017.

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