Draft:Stevan Lastavica

Stevan Lastavica also known as Bishop Stefan Lastavica (Divoš, Sremska Mitrovica, Kingdom of Serbia, 14 September 1908 - Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America, 10 May 1966) was an Eastern American and Canadian bishop in the Serbian Orthodox Church during a most trying period when politics and governments got involved in church affairs.

Biography
Stevan Lastavica was born into a priestly family. Father Jovan ("Jova") was a priest in Divoš in Serbia for many years. He finished elementary school in his native village, the Clerical High School of Saint Arsenije at Sremski Karlovci, and Bogoslovija's Saint Sava Seminary, and the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Theology in Belgrade.

After finishing the seminary, he was a clerk of the court of the Belgrade-Karlovica Archdiocese, and after his ordination to the rank of deacon, he was the secretary of the same court. He was elected secretary of the Holy Synod of Bishops in 1951, and he did not stay in this position for long. As one of the best connoisseurs of Serbian folk church singing, he was appointed singing teacher at Saint Sava Seminary in Belgrade, his alma mater.

Before going to Trieste to become a parish priest (1956), he was ordained to the rank of presbyter and elevated to the rank of archpriest. He could not stay in Trieste for a long time because of the situation in this church-school municipality at the time, so he went to Windsor (Canada) to become a parish priest. In this position, he was elected on 11 May 1963 as the bishop of Eastern America and Canada. He was ordained on 13 July 1963 in Aliquippa by Bishop Chrysostom of Braničevo and Visarion of Banat, taking the name Stefan.

An excellent singer (dramatic baritone) with a personal singing style and extremely musical, he began to engage in melographic work and decided to publish Osmoglasnik (1951). Working on it, he says in the preface: "I tried to harmonize the melodic accent with the accent of the Serbian language, but not at any cost, even at the cost of losing the character of the voice." Therefore, there are places in this Ostoglasnik where a fixed melodic line could not be sacrificed for the love of the language accent. According to the records of Bishop Stefan, professor Vojislav Ilić harmonized all three articles for the choir, which were also issued by the Eastern American and Canadian dioceses.

A few months before his death, he transferred the headquarters of the Diocese of Eastern America and Canada from Clairton (Pennsylvania) to Cleveland (Ohio). He was buried at the Serbian Orthodox cemetery in Aliquippa.