Branko Dobrosavljević

Holy Hieromartyr Branko Dobrosavljević was a Serbian Orthodox priest, born on 4 January 1886 in the village of Skrad, near Vojnić, and killed by the Ustaše on 7 May 1941, during the genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia. He was canonized in the year 2000 by the Serbian Orthodox Church and entered among the saints of its Calendar. He is commemorated on 24 April by the old calendar (7 May by the new), the day of his murder.

He completed his high school education and the School of Theology at the seminary in Sremski Karlovci in 1908. He married before ordination; he was ordained deacon on 15 March and presbyter on 22 March 1909. He served in the villages of Buvača, Radovica and Veljun and received the Order of Saint Sava and the Order of the Yugoslav Crown of the Fifth Degree for his services to his people. On the feast of Saint George, 6 May 1941, the very day of his own family feast (slava), he was arrested by the Ustaše, headed by Ivan Šajfor from Veljun. His son was also arrested, along with the parish priest of Cvijanović Brdo, Dimitrije Škorupan. At the time of his arrest he was parish priest of the village of Veljun.

Some sources state that he and the others were first imprisoned in a police station in Veljun and killed the next day in the Kestenovac forest, near Blagaj, with another 500 Serbs, in what has been called the massacre of Blagaj or Veljun; others place him among the 331 Serbs killed at Otočac. The victims were taken to a ditch, forced to dig their own graves and then hacked with axes. Father Branko and his son were kept until the end. The son was cut to pieces before his father's eyes, who was forced, according to the Serbian source, to read the funeral service over his still living son; then he himself was tortured, with terrible cruelty, to death. His remains and those of other killed Serbs were transported in 1946 to a grave at Veljun. In 2000 he was canonized by the Holy Council of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church, at its regular session, as a hieromartyr, and entered in the Calendar. The Serbian source says that he is commemorated on 7 May.