Patriarch Irinej of Serbia Enters Eternal Rest

OCP News Service – 20/11/2020

+Memory Eternal+

Belgrade-Serbia: His Holiness Irinej – Archbishop of Pec, Metropolitan of Belgrade-Karlovci and Serbian Patriarch has entered eternal rest on the 20th November 2020, at the  Karaburma  Military Hospital. The Primate of the Serbian Church was admitted to the hospital for COVID-related treatment on the 5th of November 2020.

Brief Bio
His pious parents Zdravko and MilijanaGavrilovic from the village of Vidova near Cacak- and with them the entire Serbian family – were blessed by the Lord, on August 27, 1930, with the birth of a male child whose baptismal name was Miroslav. He finished elementary school in his native village and high school in Cacak and the Theological School in Prizren, Kosovo, and Metohia. Thereupon he graduated from the Faculty of Theology in Belgrade.

After completing his military service, he was appointed professor of the Prizren Theological School, but before accepting the appointment he received monastic tonsure in the monastery of Rakovica, n. Rakovica, by the Serbian Patriarch German, receiving the monastic name Irinej, in October 1959. On the Holy and Great Friday of the same year, he was ordained a hieromonk in the church of Ruzica, Belgrade. As a professor at the Prizren Theological School, he spent some years in postgraduate studies in Athens. He was appointed principal of the Monastic School in the Ostrog monastery in 1969, from where he returned to Prizren to the position of Principal of that famous Theological School.

It was in 1974 that he was elected Vicar Bishop of the Serbian Patriarch with the title of Bishop of Moravica. He was elected Bishop of Nis in 1975.

Source:
OCP News Service