The clergyman, a good friend of Patriarch Pavle, left us

Father Georgije and mother Fevronija, Photo: RINA

This wise archimandrite ran a place of worship on the Kablar rock for more than half a century and was excommunicated in 2015 because he did not respect the decision of the Serbian Orthodox Church to renounce the brotherhood that lived there.

He asked the representatives of the diocese to allow the nun Fevronia and the monastery assistants to stay, but they told him that the nun had been fired, that this was impossible and that the bishop’s must be respected. That is not correct for the elderly abbot, so after seven decades of day and night prayer, he left the place of worship and sought a private residence.

Georgije entered the monastery as a child and spent 69 years there under the auspices of the Serbian Orthodox Church, until, in 2015, he was removed from office. Since then, she has spent time with a small number of sisters, first in the vicinity of Nis and later settled in Junkovac, near Topola, where she built a new altar and another dwelling on a small property.

In addition to him, the family now includes the nun Fevronija (Marija Mirković) and the novice Stanimirka Peruničić, who grows greenery in the garden and is helped by the abbot’s pension of 20,000 dinars. Fevronia was reprimanded for being very attached to the abbot at the Annunciation.

– I have always wanted to be an ordinary, simple and straightforward man, at the service of God and my family. For thirty of my 50 years, I lived in a monastery, with my heart and soul, I promised to watch over and listen to the abbot. And if he were to be born again, he would follow the same path again. They called me to court and resolved my case, but I did not make a vow to the people but to God. He knows everything. I left that case closed to the earthly court and we will say everything before God. And here we got by with the help of good people who didn’t even know who we were, or who we were. They found out about us, they begged us for help – said Mother Fevronia.

By the way, for decades Georgije was friends with the famous Serbian patriarch Pavle, who was at the Annunciation on the rocks Kablar, a monk in 1947.

– Once at the Annunciation we sat at the table of His Holiness Pavle, bishop of Sabac Jovan Velimirović, otherwise nephew of Nikolajev, and Simo, theologian of Studenica. Pavle is eating fish and the three of us gave him a piece of bread, which Jovan brought in the car. I say to Juan: “Consecrated, this barbecue is good.” “Good, good,” he replied. Again, “But it’s hard to swallow, it’s dry.” Patriarch Pavle joined in: “Now you will become martyrs for eating that dry roast,” then he called the nun and said: “Melania, bring them wine,” Georgije recounted.

Georgije used to get on a train in Ovčar Banja and go to Montenegro, with his friend Mardari Šišović (1919–2006), who was the head of the Reževići monastery near Petrovac for four decades.