A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Bishop Jovan (Mladenović)

(1994–2002)

The Divine provision brought the spiritual father of the Monastery Studenica, Bishop Jovan, to continue the work left by the equally most esteemed and humblest spiritual father of the Monastery Hilandar, Bishop Chrysostom.

As an accomplished monastic with the spiritual wealth he attained in the Studenica Monastery, he enriched his flock and clergy. Very soon he gained respect and confidence of his clergy and the faithful.

Bishop Jovan was born in 1950 of father Radojko and mother Stana Mladenović in the village of Dobrace, near Arilje, Serbia. He finished elementary school in his village. At the age of twelve, he went to the Klisura Monasteiy where he remained for one year and then went to the Studenica Monastery. He attended the monastic school in the Ostrog Monastery from 1967 until 1969. He was ordained a hierodeacon in the Studenica Monastery on April 25, 1971. He retained his baptized name of Jovan. Rt. Rev. Vasilije, Bishop of Žiča ordained him as hieromonk in 1973. He graduated from St. Sava Seminary in Belgrade in 1974 and from Theologcial College in Belgrade in 1980.

In 1986 he was elevated to a protosyngelos and in 1989 to an archimandrite.

He was appointed Abbot of the Monastery Studenica on July 26, 1981. He remained at that position until 1993, when he was elected a titular Bishop of Tetovo, vicar to His Holiness, and charged with administering Serbian Orthodox Dioceses in the former Yugoslav Republic Macedonia. At its regular session in May 1994 the Holy Bishops’ Assembly elected Bishop Jovan as a Bishop of the Western Diocese. He was installed to the See of the Western American Diocese Bishops in the Cathedral of St. Stevan in Alhambra, California by His Holiness Patriarch Pavle on September 18, 1994.

In 2000, two missions, two monasteries, and two sketes have been received under Bishop Jovan’s omophorion (in California St. Herman monastery, St. Xenia skete, St. Andrew mission in Redding, St. John mission in Oregon, St. Paisius monastery in Arizona, and two skeres in Alaska.) Most of the people in these missions and monasteries are American converts to Orthodoxy.


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People Directory

Milina Jovanović

Milina Jovanović came to the U.S. from Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1994. She holds a J.D. and a double master’s in interdisciplinary Social Sciences from the University of Belgrade and San José State University. She was a teaching assistant and a research associate at the Sociological and Criminological Institute in Belgrade between 1986 and 1994. As a graduate researcher in the U.S. she compared women’s education and employment in California and Yugoslavia and published the results of her research. Milina contributed to a nationally recognized study on immigrant contributions and integration practices in Santa Clara County (Bridging Borders in Silicon Valley), and co-edited KIN: Knowledge of Immigrant Nationalities. Her book All Roads Lead to Jackson: Serbian American Contributions in Amador County, CA since the Gold Rush was published in 2013 by Sebastian Press. Jovanović’s articles have appeared in Serbia, other parts of the former Yugoslavia, U.S., U.K., Belgium, and France.

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Publishing

The Christian Heritage of Kosovo and Metohija

THE HISTORICAL AND SPIRITUAL HEARTLAND OF THE SERBIAN PEOPLE

Published by: Sebastian Press, Los Angeles. Co-publishers: Institute for Balkan Studies, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Belgrade • The Episcopal Council of the Serbian Orthodox Church in North and South America • Faculty of Orthodox Theology, University of Belgrade • BLAGO Fund • Serbica Americana • Interklima-grafika, Vrnjci

“This book on Serbia’s Christian Heritage in Kosovo and Metohija, its heartland in medieval times and through Ottoman domination, is intended to introduce to a wide reading public the oldest and richest treasury of Serbian medieval history and culture. Its authors are leading specialists in the fields in which they write, so readers may place complete reliance on the factual accuracy of the material.”

“The editor and publisher have the fervent hope that today’s peoples in Kosovo and Metohija will be able to begin their discussions not from what divides them but from what unites them, emphasizing in positive and constructive ways the areas in which a Serbo-Albanian ethnic symbiosis has existed. This book invites all to consider their differences in the light of history and of the future.”

Authors: Gojko Subotić • Alex Dragnich • Slavko Todorovich • Thomas A. Emmert • Sima M. Ćirković • Arthur Evans • G. K. Chesterton • Boško Bojović • Atanasije Jevtić • Alexander F. Hilferding • Rebecca West • Rebecca West • Stamatis Skliris • Dušan T. Bataković • Radovan Samardžić • Dimitrije Djordjević • Dimitrije Bogdanović • Sava Janjić • Andrew Wermuth • F. W. Harvey and others

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