George Bogić

Saint George Bogić (1911-1941), hieromartyr, was a protopresbyter and parish priest of the Orthodox church at Našice in Slavonia, killed by the Ustaše in the night of 17 June 1941. The Serbian Orthodox Church canonized him in 1998, and in 2000 he was also entered in the diptychs of the Russian Orthodox Church. He is commemorated on 4 (17) June.

Life

He was born on 6 February 1911 near Pakrac, at Subocka. He attended the lower gymnasium at Nova Gradiška and the seminary at Sarajevo, and was ordained priest at Pakrac on 25 May 1934. He served in the parishes of Majar and Bolmače, and in 1940 was moved to Našice, where the start of the Second World War and the invasion of Yugoslavia found him.

Martyrdom

The historian Viktor Novak wrote of his death in the book Magnum Crimen. In the night of 17 June 1941 a milkman of Našice, Felix Lahner, with two other Ustaše, entered the priest's home and told him to go with them for questioning. He obeyed and got into the car that took him outside the town, where he was killed. The testimony of witnesses, among them Proko Prejnović, who hid in a tree, shows that he suffered grave torments before death. He was tied to a tree and tortured, and finally was killed. It is said that he remained upright and resolute all the time. Two witnesses name as the guilty one a Roman Catholic priest of Našice, Sidonije Šolc, who is said to have ordered the killing in the most savage manner. According to other accounts the priest was killed in order to force the local Orthodox Serbs to convert to Catholicism.

The body remained at the place of the killing for more than a day. The next afternoon, around four, the local Roma were ordered to take it and bury it in the cemetery at Brezik Našički.

Glorification

On 22 May 1998 the Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church canonized him as a hieromartyr. On 27 December 2000 the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church entered him in its diptychs. At Slavonski Brod a church dedicated to Saint George Bogić is being built on the foundation of the church of Saint George, destroyed in 1991.