Serbian Orthodox Bishop Milutin of Valjevo died after a short period of hospitalization due to the coronavirus at a Belgrade hospital on the 30th March of 2020.
Bishop Milutin (baptismal name Mihailo Knezevic) was born near Valjevo in 1949, and was baptized in the renowned monastery of Pustinja. Having finished Elementary school, Mihailo joined the monastery of Kaona when he was only 14, and later on was tonsured as monk by the late Bishop of Sabac-Valjevo Jovan (Velimirovic) in the monastery of Petkovica on the 26 October 1963, and got the monastic name of Milutin, according to a medieval Serbian King, one of the greatest founders of monasteries in Serbia. On the next day he was ordained as hierodeacon, and some time later as hieromonk at Osecina, near Valjevo.
From 1967 – 1969 he attended Monastic School in the Montenegrin monastery of Ostrog and came back to his monastery of Kaona, from where he finished Theological School of St. Sava in Belgrade. Having spent one academic year at the Belgrade Theological Faculty, he immatriculated the Theological Faculty of St. Sava in Libertyville, Ill, and graduated from it with best marks. Hieromonk Milutin spent six months as Secretary of the Diocese of Canada and six month as a parish priest in Niagara Falls, and thereafter joined again his monastery of Kaona and contributed a great deal to improvement of it as a spiritual centre. At the new Church radio Glas Crkve (The voice of the Church), directed by Protodeacon Ljubomir Rankovic, Fr. Milutin had his special hour - explanation of the Holy Scriptures for congregation.
Fr. Milutin was promoted to a rank of syncellos in1981 and to a protosyncellos in 1987. In 1994 he is abbot and in 1988 archimandrite.
As Bishop of Australia-New Zealand he was consecrated on 20.7.203 in the Belgrade Cathedral Church of St. Michael, and spent three year as Diocesan Bishop in the fifth continent, from 2003 to 2006, when the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church decided to nominate him as Diocesan Bishop of Valjevo (divided from the Diocese of Sabas-Valjevo).
During his ministry Bishop Milutin organized a Diocesan radio broadcast Istocnik (Fountain), that started its acitivity on the 2nd March of 2009. He was known as a very good preacher.
Eternal memory and divine repose of his noble soul!
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