[ad_1]
This modest, and imperishable part, great pastor of the Serbian Orthodox Church was born on September 11, 1914. At baptism in the church of St. the Apostles Peter and Paul in his hometown Kućanci (near Donji Miholjac in Slavonia , the then Austro-Hungarian monarchy), was named Gojko. From the very scarce data on that first period of the patriarch’s life, it is only known that his parents were Stevan and Ana Stojčević.
To this day, the origin of Patriarch Pavle has not been the subject of much interest, so it remains unexplored whether the patriarch took the surname Stojčević after his father or after his mother’s maiden name. In all the biographies published so far, it was noted that he lost his parents from the beginning. It is stated that Stevan’s father worked in the United States, that he contracted tuberculosis there and returned to Kućanci, and that he died when Gojko was three years old and shortly after the birth of his brother Dušan. After a few years, mother Ana remarried and Gojko and Dušan stayed with their paternal grandmother and aunt. Unfortunately, his mother Ana passed away shortly thereafter (she passed away during the third childbirth, having previously given birth to two daughters, Ljuba and Vida, married to a widower).
In an effort to verify the information about the patriarch’s father in the Kućanci village books of the dead, the Poreklo portal investigators were shocked when they did not find the mentioned Stevan Stojčević. This led them to investigate whether he could be referred to by that name as an immigrant to the United States, given the allegation that he went there to work. The document they found in that search made it possible for the ball related to the origin of Patriarch Pavle to be easily but safely unrolled by his father.
That is, the only Stevan from the town of Kućanci who went to America in those years was the one with the surname Okrajnov. He arrived at Alice Island near New York on March 28, 1910. According to the list of passengers who left America on March 19 of the same year from Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Stevan Okrajnov was 28 years old at the time, and it was said that he was not married. that is to say. single. The mention of the surname Okrajnov led to further investigation, which resulted in the undeniable discovery that the aforementioned Stevan was none other than the father of Patriarch Pavle.
As mentioned above, Gojko and Dušan, after the death of their father and after their mother Ana remarried, continued to live with their paternal grandmother and aunt. In one of the biographies of Patriarch Pavle, it is stated that his grandmother’s name was Draginja (Draga) and his aunt Senka. In an interview, the patriarch said that he remembered his father only through two images: one, trying to catch a horse, and the other lying on a scaffold, with his aunt Kristina standing next to him and crying (Jovan Janjić, Budimo ljudi, Novosti, Belgrade, 2009, page 10). On the other hand, the patriarch repeatedly emphasized the importance of Grandmother Draga, and especially Aunt Senka in her early upbringing, saying once: “She made up for my mother, so I still think: when I die, I will see my aunt first. , and then everyone else ”(Janjić, Budimo ljudi, p. 11 – quote from an interview with Profil magazine, issue 8, 1997) By the way, Aunt Senka raised Gojko and Dušan with her two daughters Ana and Agica .
The name of the patriarch’s paternal grandfather was Nikola. According to data from Snezana Milković’s book “My Grandfather Patriarch Pavle” (Prosveta, Belgrade, 2018, p. 46), he and Draginja, in addition to Stevan and the aforementioned daughter Senka, also had Stevka, Staza and Lazar. Uncle Lazar’s name is not mentioned anywhere in the patriarch’s biographies, but only the fact that he “went to school with his uncle”, who was a railway worker in Tuzla (Jovan Janjić, Budimo ljudi, p. 11 ). Our investigation has undoubtedly confirmed that it is precisely Lazar Okrainov.
Photo: News Archive
Gojko went to see his uncle Lazar in 1925, after finishing elementary school in Kućanci. According to the patriarch himself, Gojko’s uncle and aunt had eight children. “We lived on the outskirts of Tuzla, my uncle was strict but fair, he educated all his children and me, they all graduated from university and some of them obtained their doctorates” (Janjić, Budimo ljudi, p. 12, according to the Sunday Telegraph, October 26). 2003).
The name of Lazar Okrajnov is also mentioned as the name of the first owner after the arrival of Gojko Stojčević to study in Belgrade, at the Faculty of Theology (see article: Belgrade addresses of student Gojko Stojčević, the later Serbian patriarch Pavle). The biographies published so far indicate that the patriarch lived with his father’s relatives upon his arrival (Janjić, Budimo ljudi, p. 15), but it is not indicated that it was his uncle Lazar. And that this is really about the uncle of Patriarch Pavle, who definitely confirmed that his father’s last name was Okrajnov, is confirmed by our next findings.
That is, at the address Živko Davidovića 14, where Gojko spent his first year in Belgrade (1936-1937), we find out that his uncle Lazar, his wife Draginja, as well as their children Marija, Predrag and Nenad also lived there. From the data that can be found in the digital repository of the Belgrade Historical Archive (archives of the inhabitants of Belgrade and Zemun), we find that Lazar’s daughter, Marija, was born on June 29, 1912 in Kaden in the northwest of the present Czech Republic (then part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy). From this information it can be concluded that the uncle of Patriarch Lazar, before serving in Tuzla, stayed in the Czech Republic, where he met and married his wife Josefa, dev. Vojtech. Josefa converted to the Orthodox faith and was named Draginja, in honor of the patriarch’s grandmother. We find the mention of Josef’s name in the biography of his daughter, Dr. Božica Rotović-Okrajnov, who was a respected chemist and university professor (Jovan Radojčić, Biographies, Serbs west of the Danube and Drina, Book 3, Prometheus, Novi Sad, 2009, p. 484). The goddess was born in Kladanj (a place south of Tuzla) on December 24, 1914, testifying that the Okrajnov family, meanwhile, moved from the Czech Republic to Bosnia. By the way, it was common practice for railway officials to move from one end of the monarchy to the other. The mention of the goddess Okrajnov is confirmed by the declaration of the patriarch made earlier that his uncle’s children were educated and that there is a physician among them. In addition to the Goddess, his already mentioned sister Marija, who was a teacher by profession, also finished high school. In the records of the residents, at the address of Živko Davidovića 14, we also find the twin brothers Nenad and Predrag Okrajnov (born on June 3, 1918). Nenad was a forestry student and Predrag is listed as an artillery lieutenant (after 1945 he settled in Zagreb). We found no mention of the four remaining sons of Patriarch Lazar’s uncle in the residents’ records, showing that they probably became independent before the Okrajnov family moved to Belgrade. It is not known when they moved to the capital, but it must have been after 1930 because Gojko had lived with his uncles in Tuzla until then, most likely in Kladanj (from 1930 to 1936 he was in a sixth grade theology school in Sarajevo).
Photo: News Archive
By the way, the first public mention and connection of the Okrajnov family with Patriarch Pavle occurred during the media coverage of his funeral on November 20, 2009. It was later stated that “in addition to the descendants of Patriarch Dusan’s brother, the descendants of his cousin Lazar Okrajnov, a railway official, said goodbye to him, when the patriarch was living in his early youth while studying in Tuzla before World War II. “
Finally, let’s add something about the Okrajnov family and their origin. In the 1948 census, only one Okrajins house is mentioned in Kućanci. Except in Kućanci, there were some in the villages near Vukovar: Bršadin and Tripnja, as well as in Vukovar itself. The surname appears in the form Okrainov (Bršadin, Vukovar), Okraina (Lipovača, Vukovar), Okrainović (Tripnja, Vukovar) and Okrajinović (Vukovar). It is worth mentioning here that the surname Okrajnov is also present on the other side of the Danube, in the village of Bački Brestovac, between Odžak and Sombor. In addition, they were included in this place in the middle of the 18th century (under the surname Okraina). Common for the Okrajno family in Bački Brestovac and Kućanci is the celebration of Lazarus Saturday, which indicates their kinship. Patriarch Pavle regularly celebrated Lazarus Sabbath as a baptismal holiday, which is another contribution to the proof that his father was from the Okrajnov family (his mother’s family, the Stojčević, celebrate Saint John).
Regarding the oldest origin, in one place it is stated that the Kućanci Serbs emigrated from southern Serbia (Jovan Janjić, Budimo ljudi, p. 10), while in another it is stated that they emigrated from Upper Podrinje (Dušan Kašić, Srpska naselja i churches in northern Croatia and Slavonia, Diocesan Board of Directors, Zagreb, 2004, p. 260). It is interesting that in the same immigration context from Upper Podrinje, the inhabitants of the village of Kapelna, where the Stojčevićs are from, are also mentioned. the family of the patriarch’s mother, Anna.
Photo: News Archive
On the basis of all the above, it has been irrefutably established that the late Serbian patriarch, Mr. Pavle, bore the maiden name (Stojčević) of his mother Anne. The most likely reason is the fact that due to the departure From their father to the United States, Ana and Stevan were not married by the church, and in the case of having children out of wedlock, the practice of the church at that time was to register children by their mother’s last name. Also, it should be noted that both Gojko and Dusan were born during the First World War, which undoubtedly had an impact on the life of the church and the possibility of marriage, especially in the Serbian church in the territory of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. . Second, it was undoubtedly established that the surname of the patriarch’s father was Okrajnov and that Gojko and his brother Dušan were very familiar with their father’s family. This, thanks to the discovery of the portal Origen, completed the biography of the Serbian patriarch Pavle.
Follow us through iOS and Android apps
[ad_2]
