Serbian bishop visits Johannesburg
Bishop Vassilije of Srem in Serbia
The Bishop of Srem in Vojvodina, Serbia, is visiting Johannesburg for the Patronal Feast of the Church of St Thomas the Apostle in Sunninghill.
Bishop Vassilije said he visited the church once before, thirty years ago, in 1981, when he was Bishop of Australia and New Zealand. The church was then three years old.Now it is 33 years old, and Bishop Vassiolije attended Vespers with a group of parishioners and some of the clergy of the Archdiocese of Johannesburg and Pretoria.
The main celebration will be on Sunday morning when Bishop Vassilije concelebrates at the Divine Lioturgy with the Archbishop of Johannesburg and Pretoria, Metropolitan Damaskinos.
Bishjop Vassilije also hopes to visit the Monastery of the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Gerardville, west of Pretoria, which was founded by a monk from his home monastery, and seminary classmate Father Nazarius (Pribojan). Fr Nazarius dies in 2008, and is buried in the monastery church.
Bishop Vassilije of Srem with the congregation of St Thomas's Sunninghill after Vespers
The parish priest of St Thomas’s Orthodox Church, Fr Pantelejmon (Jovanovic) welcomed Bishop Vassilije to Gauteng.
Among the visiting clergy at St Thomas's were Fr Frumentius (Taubata) and Fr Athanasius (Akunda)
Deacon Stephen Hayes and Bishop Vassilije at Vespers
It’s encouraging to see faithful and clergy of such diverse ancestries united in a single Church with a single local bishop, and to see a hierarch visiting from abroad concelebrating with the local bishop, rather than governing his ethnicity’s flock from abroad. A very different experience than what is common in the United States.
So the Serbian Orthodox parish is part of the local Alexandrian Orthodox metropolis?