Biography
Bogolyub Gakovich
About Bogolyub Gakovich
Bogolyub Gakovich served Serbian Orthodox congregations in the United States before returning to Yugoslavia. Born in Bosanska Krupa, he attended school there and continued his secondary and theological studies in Sarajevo. He was ordained in 1924 and served in Bosanska Suvaja before leaving for America in 1928.
His wife, Kseniya, and their three sons shared his American years. The parish account from All Saints of North America places him on Minnesota’s Iron Range in 1932 and also names Steelton, Chicago and Kansas City among his places of ministry. It remembers his efforts to sustain Orthodox church life during the Depression.
After his return, he became secretary of the church court in Plaški. In 1941 he was arrested with Bishop Sava Trlajić and imprisoned before being taken through Gospić to Jadovno, where Ustaše killed him.
A postwar diocesan report reproduced by the Serbian Orthodox Church names Gakovich among the prisoners taken with Bishop Sava to the railway station in Plaški on 19 July 1941. The report says that their train arrived the following morning and that the group was brought to the prison in Gospić that evening. This account preserves a more specific record of the prisoners’ transfer than the later abbreviated parish biographies.
The Matica srpska biographical list also identifies him as the church-court secretary and records his death at Jadovno.
Saint Basil of Ostrog parish in Chisholm remembers Gakovich among its former clergy who later died as martyrs. The Serbian Orthodox Church lists him among the Gornji Karlovac clergy collectively recognized as saints in 2022.
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