Matej Stijačić
Script error: No such module "AfC submission catcheck".
Mateja Stijačić (Klobuk, 11 December 1883 - Jadovno Camp, 12 April 1941) was a priest of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the rank of archpriest.
After about three decades of priesthood in Serbian Orthodox communities in the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada, at the suggestion of Nikola Tesla, he served as archpriest of Smiljan Parish from 1935 to 12 April 1941, when he was brutally killed by Croatian Ustashas. [1]
Biography[edit]
He was born in 1883 in Klobuk, 20 km east of Trebinje. He was the son of Milica and Vidak Stijačić and had three brothers: Ivan, Spasoje, and Petra, and two sisters, Saveta and Anita, from the same mother who passed away at the last birth. Vidakov's second wife - Mara Deretić, gave birth to Mateja's four half-sisters: Borika, Andja, Dostinja, and Vidosava. After graduating from the seminary and ordination, he left with his wife Anica and cousin Peter in the first years of the twentieth century. ABOUT. By way, on a long journey across the Atlantic. He served in many parishes in America, so his five children (Branko, Slavo, Zora, Nadežda, and Vera) were born in different places and even in the USA.
Mateja was at the same time a parish priest and a very successful Orthodox missionary in places where there were Serbs, but also other nations from the Balkans, Greeks, Romanians, Croats ... Serbs mostly came from Herzegovina, Dalmatia, Montenegro, Lika, Kordun, Banija, but also Vojvodina because at that time Hungary pursued a policy of emigrating as many Serbs as possible from Bačka and Banat in order to populate those areas with Hungarians from the north of Hungary and thus influence demographic changes. [2]
In 1908, Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, causing major unrest in the Balkans. Basically, it was one of the causes of the Great War of 1914-1918. year, which cost the entire Serbian people dearly, but also a large part of the world. Mateja's father Vidak and 70 other prominent Serbs were hanged by the Austrian army in 1916 near the Catholic church in Trebinje, just because they are Serbs, Orthodox, and respectable Herzegovinian citizens. At the time, Matej's son was helping to send volunteers and help the Serbian army and volunteers from Montenegro and Herzegovina who were in very difficult war conditions during the First World War. Serbia in the First World War.
It finally settles and stays in the mining town of Chisolm, Canton of St. Louis (Chisholm, St. Louis County) in the state of Minnesota. Having longed for his homeland, Mateja went on a long journey in 1923 and visited graves, friends, and relatives throughout Herzegovina and Montenegro. He returned to America at the end of 1924 and continued his friendship with the greats Nikola Tesla, Dr. Paja Radosavljević, Mihajlo Pupin and many other Serbian Orthodox. All of them were very interested in the events in the homeland, and it, regardless of the administration, government, borders, and occupations, practically spread over most of the Balkan Peninsula, from Kordun, Banija, and Lika, through Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo and Metohija, Vojvodina, Serbia, Macedonia, all the way to Albania and northern Greece.
Priesthood in Smiljan[edit]
In distant Lika in Smiljan, [3], the native village of Nikola Tesla [4], (formerly the Austrian Empire, and today Croatia), priestly services were performed by Milutin Tesla (father of the great Nikola Tesla) from 1852 to 1863, and then by deacon Stevan Kosanović (1891—1892), and for a time the priest Dimitrije Jerković, and then, for a long time there was no parish priest or service. That was probably the motive of Nikola Tesla to propose against Mateja to go from America to Smiljan and start the matter from the dead point. Nikola Tesla saw in Mateja an equally dedicated and sincere Orthodox priest as his father was. Mato accepted the friend's proposal with pride and responsibility and went to distant Smiljan in 1935 together with his family. The new archpriest in Smiljan first appropriately marked Tesla's birthplace, the already famous Tesla in America, glorified among the insufficiently informed poor Lika villagers pressed by great troubles in an eternally hostile environment. Prota organized a big celebration of Nikola Tesla's 80th birthday in front of the birthplace of the respected genius. The celebrant was not physically present, but that is why many guests from the respected world of science and culture came, as well as many Serbs from Smiljan and the surrounding area. Around the temple of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, he again gathered parishioners from Smiljan and the surrounding area. He lived in the birth house of Nikola Tesla, mostly in the summer, and in the winter he would move to Gospić. The great innovator, visionary, and scientist, Nikola Tesla, could not even dream that the fulfillment of his proposal to go to Smiljan, addressed to a respected anti and friend, would lead Mateja Stijačić, an Orthodox missionary, to an indescribable martyr's death.
The suffering of the Orthodox in the time of fascism[edit]
In those years, Nazism was born in Europe and its tragic consequences all over the world. Nazism also affected Croatia in its most brutal form. Very quickly, without declaring war, Hitler attacked Serbia and bombed Belgrade terribly (April 6, 1941), and that was the green light for the already prepared extreme-chauvinist militant order of the Ustashas so that they could commit atrocities against the Jewish and Serbian populations, priests and prominent representatives of these two peoples were under attack. In just a few days (April 10, 1941), the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) was officially proclaimed through the organization of a clerical-militant elite of Croatian nationalists supported by the Ustasha army prepared for the most brutal actions in human history. It was already known among the Ustasha executioners that Ante Pavelić himself, the founder of the Independent State of Croatia (), approved the Law on Approving Massacres as a way of treating the Serb population in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dalmatia, Slavonia, and even Srem.
The Ustasha executioners simply competed over who would kill more Serbs, and thus boasted among the leaders of the Independent State of Croatia. Thus, on April 12, 1941, in Gospić, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the Ustashas, without any reason, arrested Matej Stijačić, took him first to the city concentration camp, and immediately afterward, with many other citizens, to the already infamous concentration camp. Jadovno camp. At the same time, the Ustashas found their underage son Slava in the churchyard in Smiljan and brutally slaughtered him in front of his sister Nadežda.
About a hundred priests, archbishops, and parishioners, from the area of Serbian Krajina (Lika, Kordun, and Banija) and according to some sources 68 thousand civilians, men, women, and children, mostly of Serbian nationality and Orthodox faith, and partly Jews, were taken by Ustasha villains to concentration camps Gospić and Jadovno. [5] Ustasha leaders ordered the torture, beating, and starvation of innocent Orthodox people and clergy, and then the executioners took them to Mount Velebit, carried out brutal torture and killings, and threw victims, either barely alive or dead, into numerous narrow, steep, and indefinitely deep pits. Against Mateja, the Ustashas removed the skin from his back, sprinkled his naked wounds with salt, took out his big blue eyes, and threw the tortured man into the hopeless pit Jadovno, in front of which there is a memorial plaque erected by the Bishop and the clergy of the Diocese of Gornja Karlovačka. There are 54 names of the killed archbishops and priests on the plaque. Among the names of the priests is the name: Mateja Stijačić. [6]
All that remains of Smiljan is a modest cemetery above the church and one common grave with the remains of more than 500 people, women, children ... Among the victims were 119 people with the surname Tesla. The Ustashas killed the entire population in Smiljan and its surroundings. The constantly present, repressive policy of the Croatian government towards the Serbian population prevented any thought of rebuilding the village. It was only in 1986 that the Serbian Orthodox Church managed to obtain permission to partially renovate the Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. The small Serb community that remains in Croatia to this day, with superhuman efforts, tries to visit or mark the places of suffering or to erect monuments, but they are often destroyed overnight by militant pro-Ustasha vandals and pass mostly without responsibility and prosecution.
Canonization of the Hieromartyr[edit]
Mateja Stijačić suffered a martyr's death as the archpriest of the Serbian Orthodox Church. He was glorified as a priest-martyr and canonized in St. Matthew Stijacic in 2004 by the Serbian Orthodox Church of North America. His name is on the list of saints next to important names in Serbian history, religion, and cultures, such as the names of the venerable fathers of St. Nikolaj Velimirović, St. Sebastian Dabovich, St. Varnava Nastić and other famous Serbs of the Orthodox faith. [7]
See more[edit]
- Chronology of Ustasha crimes in 1941.
References[edit]
- Translated from Serbian Wikipedia: https://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%98%D0%B0_%D0%A1%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%B8%D1%9B
This article "Matej Stijačić" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Matej Stijačić. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
