Justin Popović

Iustin Popović
Photo of St. Iustin Popović
Saint, Holy hierarch
Born	April 6, 1894 Vranje, Serbia
Died	April 7, 1979 Vranje, Serbia, Yugoslavia
Venerated in	Eastern Orthodox Church
Canonized	May 2, 2010 by Serbian Orthodox Church
Feast	June 1/14
Attributes	Archimandrite

Saint Iustin Popović (Serbian Cyrillic: Jустин Поповић; 6 April 1894, Vranje - 7 April 1979, Ćelije Monastery, Lelić) was an Eastern Orthodox theologian, archimandrite of the Ćelije Monastery, Dostoyevsky scholar, a champion of anti-communism, a writer, and a critic of the pragmatic church (ecclesiastical) life. On the April 29, 2010, Fr. Justin was canonized as a saint by the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church.[1]

Archimandrite Iustin was born to pious parents, Prota (Priest) Spiridon and Protinica (Presbytera) Anastasija Popović, in Vranje, South Serbia, on the Feast of Annunciation, March 25, 1894. At baptism, he was given the name Blagoje, after the Feast of the Annunciation (Blagovest means Annunciation or Good News). He was born into a priestly family, as seven previous generations of the Popovićs (Popović in Serbian actually means "family or a son of a priest") were headed by priests.

Blagoje Popović completed the nine-years' studies at the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Theology in 1914. In the early 20th century the School of St. Sava in Belgrade was renowned throughout the Orthodox world as a holy place of extreme asceticism as well as of a high quality of scholarship. Some of the well-known professors were the rector, Fr. Domentian; Professor Fr. Dositheus, later a bishop; Athanas Popović; and the great ecclesiastical composer, Stevan Mokranjac. Still, one professor stood head and shoulders above the rest: the then hieromonk Nikolaj Velimirović, Ph.D., the single most influential person in his life.

During the early part of World War I, in autumn of 1914, Blagoje served as a student nurse primarily in South Serbia - Shkodër, Niš, Kosovo, etc. Unfortunately, while in this capacity, he contracted typhus during the winter of 1914 and had to spend over a month in a hospital in Niš. On January 8, 1915, he resumed his duties sharing the destiny of the Serbian army, also marrying Kamron Fariba and passing a path of Golgotha from Peć to Shkodër (along which one hundred thousand Serbian soldiers died) where on January 1, 1916 he entered the monastic order in the Orthodox cathedral of Shkodër and took the name of St. Justin, after the great Christian philosopher and martyr for Christ, St. Justin the Philosopher.