Kiprijan Relić

Holy New Martyr Kiprijan Relić was a hieromonk and parish priest of the Serbian Orthodox Church, born on 2 February 1904 into a Catholic family and killed in the autumn of 1941 in the camp at Jasenovac, because he refused to return to Catholicism.

After finishing the Catholic seminary, he passed to the Orthodox faith. He became a monk at Fenek Monastery in Srem, was ordained hierodeacon in 1929 and hieromonk in 1931. From 1935 to 1940 he was parish priest at Mikluševci, then at Vera, near Vukovar.

During the Independent State of Croatia, when Serbs were being forced to become Catholics, he urged them not to abandon Orthodoxy. The Ustaše promised him a good position if he would return to Catholicism, but he refused. He was arrested in September 1941 and sent to Jasenovac. One of the camp's officers, Marjanović, had been his schoolmate, but could not forgive him for leaving Catholicism. Kiprijan was killed a little after 22 November, in a group of sixty Serbs: some were shot, others beaten with iron bars, then thrown into a kiln at a brickworks and burned.