On November 15, 2009, Patriarch Pavle passed away. He was buried in the Rakovica Monastery in the presence of the highest state officials, church dignitaries and hundreds of thousands of citizens.

Patriarch Pavle (in the world Gojko Stojčević) was born in 1914 in the Slavonian village of Kućanci near Donji Miholjac. He lost his parents at an early age. At the age of three, little Gojko and his brother were taken care of by their aunt.

He completed his junior high school in Tuzla and his senior high school in Belgrade. This was followed by his education at the seminary in Sarajevo, and then at the Faculty of Theology in Belgrade. During World War II, he worked for a time as a catechist in Banja Koviljača, in a home for children who had fled Bosnia. While saving a child from drowning in the Drina River, Gojko fell ill and contracted tuberculosis. Fighting the disease with prayer, he was eventually cured. As a sign of gratitude to God for granting him health, Gojko carved a cross that is still kept in this monastery today. After a period of novitiate, he was tonsured a monk in the Blagoveshchenje Monastery in 1948 and given the name Pavle. He was enthroned as Bishop of Raška-Prizren in 1957, in the Prizren Cathedral Church.

He attended postgraduate studies at the Faculty of Theology in Athens. He spent almost 34 years as a bishop in Kosovo and Metohija. It was a very difficult time for Serbs and the Serbian Church. He informed not only the church authorities but also the state authorities about the attacks of Albanians on the property of the Church, the monks and even the Serbian people who were emigrating. He himself, with Christian humility and patience, endured insults, even physical attacks. About that time, Patriarch Pavle himself wrote: “I received warnings to be careful with my regular reports to the Holy Synod because they also reached the hands of the secular authorities, but it was becoming increasingly clear that Kosovo and Metohija was somewhere, in some place, doomed to no longer be Serbian”.

In the Diocese of Raška-Prizren, he built new churches, renovated old and destroyed ones, consecrated and tonsured new priests and monks. He took care of the Prizren Theological Seminary, where he occasionally gave lectures on church chant and the Church Slavonic language. He often traveled, visited and served in all the places of his Diocese. With the Kosovo exodus, the Prizren Seminary of Saints Cyril and Methodius was temporarily moved to Niš, and the seat of the Raška-Prizren Diocese was moved from Peć to the Gračanica Monastery.

As Bishop of Raška-Prizren, he testified at the United Nations before numerous statesmen about the suffering of the Serbian people in Kosovo and Metohija.

Considering the merits of Patriarch Pavle in the scientific theological field, the Faculty of Theology of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Belgrade awarded him the title of Honorary Doctor of Theology.

He published a monograph on the Devič Monastery. Thanks to Patriarch Pavle, it was multiplied in 300 copies by the Oktoih printing house of Đurđe Crnojević.

During his patriarchal service, several dioceses were restored and founded. The Seminary in Cetinje was restored in 1992. In 1994, the Theological Academy of St. Basil of Ostrog was opened in Srbinj (Foča) and the Seminary in Kragujevac in 1997, as a department of the Theological Seminary of St. Sava in Belgrade. The information service of the Serbian Orthodox Church was also founded. In 1993, he launched the Academy of Arts and Conservation in Belgrade, with several departments (icon painting, fresco painting, conservation); in the following years, religious education was returned to schools, as was the Faculty of Theology within the University of Belgrade, from which he had been expelled by the communist authorities in 1952.

Patriarch Pavle received numerous decorations.

Prepared by: Miomir Đurišić