Dušan Prijović

Saint Dušan Prijović, hieromartyr, was a priest of the Serbian Orthodox Church, parish priest of Buchevo, and died by shooting on 27 January 1946. He was canonized by the Serbian Orthodox Church on 15 May 2005, among the holy hieromartyrs of Dabar-⁠Bosnia and Mileševa.

He was born in 1906 at Pljevlja, to his father Novica, a mason originally from Golesh in Herzegovina, and his mother Staka, from Zhidovići. He finished primary school and four classes of gymnasium in his native town, in 1923, and in 1928 the five-⁠year seminary at Prizren. With his wife Danica, born Mićović, he had seven children: Zorka, Jelena, Spasoje, Novica, Kovilka, Milena and Staka.

He was ordained deacon on 16 March and priest on 18 May 1929 by Bishop Seraphim of Raška and Prizren. On 22 June of the same year he was appointed parish priest of Buchevo, where he served until the end of his life. In 1940 Metropolitan Peter Zimonjić awarded him the red sash.

In January 1943 Dušan Prijović gave lodging to four officers of the king who happened to be in the village. Some villagers told the partisans that the king's officers were spending the night in the priest's house, and the partisans at once surrounded the house and called on them to fight or surrender. Because there were children in the house, the officers did not want to fight and surrendered. Although the partisans promised that nothing would be done to them, they took them to their headquarters at Adrovići and shot them there. The next day they came back for Dušan Prijović, but when he saw them he fled into the forest, where he hid for a long time. Meanwhile the partisans burned his house, and his family managed to flee to relatives at Golesh in Herzegovina. After he was captured, Dušan Prijović was taken to Sastavci and tortured, and on 27 January 1946 he was shot.

He was buried in the cemetery at Golesh in Herzegovina. About two kilometres from the grave, in the place where he gave communion to schoolchildren, the church of the Holy Emperor Constantine and Empress Helen was built.

On 15 May 2005, at the Žitomislić monastery, the canonization of the holy hieromartyrs of Dabar-⁠Bosnia and Mileševa took place, among them Dušan Prijović, parish priest of Buchevo. An icon of all twenty-⁠nine hieromartyrs was also written.