Stanislav Nasadil

Saint Stanislav Nasadil (20 October 1907 - 28 June 1941), hieromartyr, was a Czech priest of the Serbian Orthodox Church, martyred in the Ustasha camp at Jadovno in the Second World War. He was canonized by the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia on 9 June 2019. He is commemorated on 4 July by the old calendar (17 July by the new), together with Hieromartyr Sava of Upper Karlovac and those who suffered with him, according to the Serbian source.

Youth

He was born on 20 October 1907 at Loštice, in Austria-⁠Hungary (today the Olomouc region, Czechia), the son of Fr. František Nasadil and Františka. He had four brothers. He attended the national school, then the burgher school. In 1921 and 1922 the family renounced the Roman Catholic faith, and in 1924 joined the newly arising Orthodox Church under the leadership of Bishop Gorazd Pavlík, who was also to suffer martyrdom in the same war.

As a young man he decided on a Christian vocation. In 1923 he was sent, with fourteen other students, to a seminary of the Serbian Orthodox Church, at the time of the renewal of Orthodoxy in Czechoslovakia. The sources disagree on the place: the English says he studied at the seminary of Saint John the Theologian in Bitola and in 1928 finished his studies with the school-⁠leaving examination at the seminary of Saint Sava, while the Serbian says he began at Sremski Karlovci and finished in 1928 at the seminary of Bitola. Then he returned home and worked in the service of the Church and as a translator at the Baťa shoe factories in Zlín. On 6 July 1931 he married Leopoldina, née Pestlová (Desanka), and in the same year their son Dalibor, called Stanko, was born.

In 1932 or 1933 he went to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. On 11 March 1933 he was ordained deacon by Bishop Irenaeus of Bačka and the next day priest. After ordination he worked as assistant priest in the parish of Stara Moravica, in the diocese of Upper Karlovac, then became parish priest in Lička Jesenica, in Croatia, at the church of Saint Elijah the Prophet. In 1935 his family joined him, and soon his son Branko was born. As a priest he enjoyed great esteem, and was musically gifted and played the violin.

Martyrdom

In April 1941 Croatian and Bosnian territories were occupied by the Independent State of Croatia, fascist and a vassal of the Third Reich, which destroyed religious minorities (Orthodox Serbs, Roma and Jews). On 23 May 1941 the Ustasha entered the residence of the diocesan bishop Sava Trlajić in the village of Plaški. The bishop and the clergy present, among them Fr. Nasadil, were declared undesirable and ordered to leave the country under threat of death. Those present decided to stay with their faithful.

On 17 June 1941 Bishop Sava, Fr. Nasadil and other clergy and laity were arrested. Fr. Nasadil refused to defend himself with Czechoslovak citizenship and to leave his family. At the train station he managed to write the name of the Gospić camp on a piece of paper and throw it from the train, so the family learned where he was being taken. He was then moved, with Bishop Sava and others, to the camp of Jadovno. There the prisoners were tortured and in the end killed. Stanislav Nasadil died after cruel torture on 28 June 1941 and his body was thrown into the Šaran pit, about a kilometer from the camp.

Glorification

The sources disagree about the glorification. The Serbian source says that the Serbian Orthodox Church counted him among the saints in 1961 and honors him liturgically with Hieromartyr Sava of Upper Karlovac and the hieromartyrs who suffered with him, while the English source, which mentions no such thing, says only that he was canonized on 9 June 2019 by the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia, in a service at the cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Michalovce. The Holy Synod of Bishops of that Church decided on 29 January 2019 to enter in its diptych the Orthodox priest of Czech origin Stanislav Nasadil, who suffered in June 1941 in the Ustasha camp at Gospić (the Serbian source).