St. Justin Popovich

St. Justin Popovich was born on 6 April 1894 (25 March by the old calendar) at Vranje in Serbia, on the feast of the Annunciation, and took the monastic name Justin. A theologian of rare depth, he studied in Russia, England, and Athens and became a professor at the University of Belgrade, though his uncompromising Orthodoxy and his criticism of the humanism and secularism of the age set him at odds with the currents of his day.

Under the atheist communist regime that took power in Yugoslavia after the Second World War, he was expelled from his chair and confined for the last decades of his life to the monastery of Ćelije, where he lived in prayer, writing, and the pastoral care of the nuns. There he composed his great works, including a multi-volume Dogmatics and Lives of the Saints, and formed a generation of disciples. A confessor who suffered for his fidelity, he died at Ćelije on 25 March 1979 and was canonized by the Serbian Orthodox Church in 2010.