Đorđe Bogić

Saint Georgije Bogić
Holy hieromartyr
Born(1911-02-06)6 February 1911
Pakrac, Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, Austria-Hungary
Died17 June 1941(1941-06-17) (aged 30)
Našice, Independent State of Croatia
Venerated inEastern Orthodox Church
Canonized1998, Belgrade by Serbian Orthodox Church
Feast17 June (O.S. 4 June)
AttributesVested as a protopresbyter

Đorđe Bogić (Serbian Cyrillic: Ђорђе Богић; 6 February 1911 – 17 June 1941) was a protopresbyter in the Serbian Orthodox Church and the parish priest of the Orthodox church in Našice.

He was canonized by the Serbian Orthodox Church as Saint Hieromartyr Georgije Bogić due to his brutal murder by Croatian fascists in 1941.[1][2]

Life

Đorđe was born in Pakrac on 6 February 1911.[3] He completed grammar school in Nova Gradiška and seminary in Sarajevo. On 25 May 1934, Đorđe was ordained a priest in Pakrac.[3] Đorđe then performed his duties in the parishes of Majar and Bolmače, after which he was moved to Našice, where he happened to be at the beginning of World War II.

Torture and death

His afflictions were witnessed by Proko Prejnović, a Serb who hid from the Ustashe in a tree:[4]

The Ustashas tied the priest to a tree before they began their atrocities. They cut off the priest's ears, his nose, and then his tongue. With relish and entirely senselessly, they pulled out his beard and the underlying skin. The poor, exhausted priest cried out of sheer pain. He was still a young man of thirty, healthy and well built. The whole time the priest was resolute and stood upright so that the Ustashas could give free rein to their crudeness. After gouging out his eyes the priest still did not stir so they cut open his stomach and chest so that Bogić collapsed. One could see his heart beating. One of the Ustashas yelled: "Cursed be your Serb mother whose heart is still beating." After this sentence the Ustashas set the priest on fire and shortened his pain and suffering.

According to another witness, the person guilty of these martyr afflictions was a Roman Catholic priest from Našice, Sidonije Šolc: "He (Fra Šolc) had our parish priest Đorđe Bogić killed in the most monstrous manner. They took him out of his apartment in the middle of the night and butchered him.[5]

Đorđe's body remained in the same place the whole night, until the afternoon of the next day. Around 4 PM, the local Romani were ordered to take the corpse to Brezik Našički and to bury it in the graveyard.[4]

Canonization

At the regular session of the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1998, Protopresbyter Đorđe was canonized, and his name was entered in the list of names of the Serbian Church Saints.[citation needed]

See also

References

  1. ^ Ustaški zločini nad srpskim sveštenicima by Velibor Džomić; publisher: Svetigora
  2. ^ "The Role of the Roman Catholic Church in the Genocide of Serbs on the Territory of the "Independent State of Croatia". Protodeacon Vladimir Vasilik".
  3. ^ a b "DANAS JE: Sveti Mitrofan; Sv.Marta i Marija; Sv.Joanikije Crnogorski (Bogić) (Odanije Vaznesenja)". ikragujevac.com. 17 June 2016.
  4. ^ a b Dinu, Radu Harald (2015). Yeomans, Rory (ed.). The Utopia of Terror: Life and Death in Wartime Croatia. Boydell & Brewer. p. 119. ISBN 9781580465458.
  5. ^ Novak, Viktor (2011). Magnum Crimen: Half a Century of Clericalism in Croatia, Volume 1. Gambit. pp. 641–642. ISBN 9788676240494.