Justin Popović

Justin Popović (Јустин Поповић, ; 7 April 1894 – 7 April 1979) was a Serbian Orthodox theologian, archimandrite of the Ćelije Monastery, Dostoyevsky scholar, writer, anti-communist advocate and critic of the pragmatic church ecclesiastical life.

On 2 May 2010, he was canonized as a saint by the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church. In English, his name is sometimes spelled "Iustin Popovich".

Early life
Popović was born to Spiridon, a sexton, and Anastasija Popović, in the southern Serbian town of Vranje, on 6 April 1894, the day before the Feast of Annunciation by the Julian calendar. At his 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 (not including his father) of the Popovićs (Popović in Serbian actually means "family or a son of a priest") were headed by priests.

He completed his nine-year 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 ecclesiastical composer, Stevan Mokranjac. Still, one professor stood head and shoulders above the rest: the hieromonk, Nikolaj Velimirović, professor of philosophy and theology, who was the single most influential person in Popović's life.

World War I
During the early part of World War I, in autumn of 1914, Popović served as a student nurse primarily in Shkodër, Niš and throughout Kosovo. 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 8 January 1915, he resumed his duties sharing the destiny of the Serbian Army from Peć to Skadar during which 100,000 Serbian soldiers died. On January 1, 1916 he entered the monastic order in the Orthodox cathedral of Shkodër and took the name of Justin after St. Justin the Philosopher.

Russia
Shortly after he had become a monk, Popović, along with several other students travelled to Petrograd, Russia, for a year-long study in the Orthodox Seminary there. It was there the young Popović first dedicated himself more fully to Orthodoxy and the monastic way of life. He learned of the great Russian ascetics: St. Anthony and Theodosius of the Caves in Kiev, St. Seraphim of Sarov, St. Sergius of Radonezh, St. John of Kronstadt and others.

Oxford
After his year's study and sojourn in Russia, Popović entered the Theological School in Oxford, England, at the prompting of his spiritual father, Nikolaj. Popović studied theology in London from 1916 to 1926, but his doctoral thesis under the title "Filozofija i religija F. M. Dostojevskog" (The Philosophy and Religion of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky) was not accepted because of its radical criticism of Western humanism, rationalism, Roman Catholicism and anthropocentrism. It was subsequently printed in 1923, when Popović became the editor of the Orthodox journal The Christian Life. Together with his colleagues from the Oxford University, he edited the periodical The Christian Life for twenty years.

Athens
In 1926, Popović was promoted to the title of the Doctor of Theology at the Faculty of Theology, University in Athens, Greece, his dissertation being "Problem ličnosti i saznanja po Sv. Makariju Egipatskom" -The Problem of Personality and Cognition According to St. Macarius of Egypt. For his course on the Lives of the Saints, he began to translate into Serbian the Lives of the Saints from the Greek, Syriac and Slavonic sources, as well as numerous minor works of the Fathers (homilies of John Chrysostom, Macarius and Isaac the Syrian). He also wrote The Theory of Knowledge According to St. Isaac, which was derived from The Ascetical Homilies of Isaac the Syrian. From 1930 to 1932, after a short period as Professor in the Theological Academy of St. Cyril and Methodius in Prizren, Serbia, he was an associate of Bishop Joseph (Cvijovich) of Bitola and the man tasked with reorganising the Church of the Carpatho-Russians in Czechoslovakia. The area had seen an increase in those espousing Uniatism, with previously converted Christians of those regions started their conversion back into the Eastern Orthodoxy.

Fate brought Nikolaj Velimirović, John Maximovich of Shanghai and San Francisco and Popović together in Bitola. The young Maximovich (a Russian of Serbian ancestry) was Popović's assistant at the theological seminary there, and Velimirović was the Bishop of Ohrid, Macedonia.

Belgrade
Popović was chosen in 1934 as professor of dogmatics at the Theological Faculty of St. Sava in Belgrade. As a professor at the University of Belgrade, he was one of the founders in 1938 of the Serbian Philosophical Society along with a number of noted Belgrade intellectuals, including Branislav Petronijević, Toma Živanović (1884–1971), Miloš Đurić (1892–1967), Prvoš Slankamenac, Vladimir Dvorniković, Jelisaveta Branković, Zagorka Mićić, Kajica Milanov, Nikola Popović and others.

He was also the professor of dogmatics at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology of the University of Belgrade from 1934 until 1945, until World War II. In 1945, with the establishment of the communist state and state atheism, his anti-communism and efforts to convert others to Christianity had little place.

Communist regime
After World War II, Popović was considered ineligible by the communist government to continue as a professor at the seminary. Together with a few fellow professors, he was ousted from the Faculty in 1945. Popović spent 31 years in the Ćelije Monastery under the continuous surveillance of the Communist police. The Communists limited his public appearances within monastic confines. While Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović was never allowed to return to Serbia and Yugoslavia after his deportation in the Dachau concentration camp, Popović was allowed to actively participate in the organization of the Serbian Orthodox Church. That was perhaps because unlike Velimirović, Popović was not a bishop but a hieromonk.

A devoted monk and philosopher of the Eastern Orthodox theology, Popović was a great critic of "ecumenism, providing it was inclined towards relativization of God's Truth", according to John Meyendorff, professor of the Academy of St. Vladimir, now in Scarsdale, New York (associated with Columbia University) and every bit as much a critic of the "Catholic novelties" and the Pope's anti-Christianity. Until the end of his life, Popović was a dedicated creator, and it is no wonder that his work is considered as "a great contribution to the Orthodox theology" and he himself as "the secret conscience of the Serbian Church and the entire martyr's Orthodox religion", according to John N. Karmiris, the Greek academician. His example has been invoked by the Church of Greece Synod, in the strict sense, which banned prayers with members of other Christian denominations.

Popović died the day after his birthday, on the day of the Feast of the Annunciation (March 25 by the Julian Calendar).

Legacy
Porfirije, Serbian Patriarch, stated that Popović is one of the three most notable Serbian theologians to be recognised internationally.

Works

 * The Philosophy and Religion of F.M. Dostoevsky (1923),
 * Dogmatics of the Orthodox Church, I-III (1932, 1935, 1980),
 * The Progress in the Death Mill (1933),
 * The Foundations of Theology (1939)
 * Dostoevsky on Europe and Slavism (1940),
 * Philosophical Abysses (1957),
 * The Man and the God-Man (1969 in the Greek language),
 * Hagiographies of the Saints, I-XII (1972–1977),
 * The Orthodox Church and Ecumenism (1974, in the Greek and Serbian languages, 2001, in English, Lazarica Press UK)
 * Praznične besede
 * Pashalne besede
 * Nedeljne besede
 * Svetosavlje kao filozofija života
 * Put Bogopoznanja
 * Setve i žetve
 * Druge besede
 * Akatisti
 * Tumačenje Svetog Jevanđelja po Mateju
 * Tumačenje Svetog Jevanđelja po Jovanu
 * Tumačenje poslanica Svetog Jovana Bogoslova
 * Tumačenje poslanica prve i druge Korinićanima Svetog apostola Pavla
 * Tumačenje poslanice Efescima
 * Tumačenje poslanice Filipljanima i Kalošanima Svetog apostola Pavla
 * Tumačenje poslanice Galatima I-II
 * Tumačenje poslanice Solunjanima Svetog apostola Pavla