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Head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, His Holiness Serbian Patriarch Irinej died today in the military hospital in Karaburma, Belgrade.
Serbian Patriarch Irinej (Gavrilović) was born in the village of Vidova, near Čačak, in 1930 to father Zdravko and mother Milijana and was named Miroslav. He finished elementary school in his native village, and then high school in Čačak. After graduating from high school, he enrolled and graduated from the seminary in Prizren, and then from the Faculty of Theology in Belgrade. After graduating from the faculty, he went to the army, and after returning from the army, he was soon appointed professor of the Prizren seminary. Before taking office as a professor in October 1959, he received the monastic rank in the monastery of Rakovica from His Holiness the Serbian Patriarch German, receiving the monastic name Irinej. In the same month, on the day of Holy Friday, October 27, 1959, he was ordained a hieromonk in the Ružica Church on Kalemegdan, Belgrade. While serving as a professor at the Theological Seminary in Prizren, in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija, he was sent to postgraduate studies in Athens. In 1969, he was appointed the director of the Monastic School in the Ostrog monastery, from where he returned to Prizren and was appointed rector of the Prizren seminary. From that position, in 1974, he was elected vicar bishop of His Holiness the Serbian Patriarch with the title of Bishop of Moravica. A year later, in 1975, he was elected Bishop of Niš. At the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church, on January 22, 2010, he was elected Archbishop of Peć, Metropolitan of Belgrade and Karlovac and Serbian Patriarch.
Memory eternal!
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