Church of St. Sava (Drvar)
The Church of St. Sava ( Serbian : Црква Светог Саве, Crkva Svetog Save), also called the Church of St. Sava of Serbia , is a Serbian Orthodox church in the town of Drvar in northwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina .
It was built from 1936 to 1939. The church is dedicated to the Serbian national saint, the first archbishop and the illuminator of the Serbian people, Sava of Serbia . It is the parish church of the parishes Drvar I and Drvar II in the deanery Bosansko Grahovo - Drvar , the eparchy Bihać - Petrovac of the Serbian Orthodox Church .
location
The church is located in the center of Drvar on the main street of the town of Titova ulica . The church stands near the bank of the Unac River , a right tributary of the Una .
history
The Church in World War II and Yugoslavia
Built from 1936 to 1939 church was built in World War II in 1941, by the Croatian Ustasha - fascists vandalized, looted and heavily damaged. Eventually the Ustaša desecrated and desecrated the church. After the war ended, the church was used as a storage place for salt and other food.
It was not until 1963 that Archbishop Stefan of the Serbian Orthodox Eparchy of Dalmatia received the church back from the communists.
The Church in the Bosnian War
In 1995, in the last year of the Bosnian War , Croatian soldiers of the HVO devastated the church of St. Sava during the conquest of the Serb- inhabited town of Drvar , and the soldiers also stole the icons and other valuables from the church, and they also destroyed the iconostasis .
The church was badly damaged. The majority of the Serbian residents of Drvar and the surrounding villages had fled to the Republika Srpska or Serbia . Shortly after the Bosnian War in 1996 and 1998, the now Croatian residents of the city prevented the former Serbian residents from returning to Drvar and the surrounding villages.
The Church after the Bosnian War
Today the majority of the former Serbian residents have returned to Drvar and the surrounding area. Since 1998 the former administrator of the parish , the former Serbian Orthodox Bishop of the Eparchy of Frankfurt and all of Germany and then monk Sergije Karanović , has started to rebuild the church and the Orthodox church life in the parish of Drvar. His successors continue to do this work.
In 2006 three windows of the church were destroyed by strangers, the windows were replaced. In April 2013, the church was struck by lightning, breaking the stone cross from 1939 and damaging the roof of the church.
The priests of the Drvar parish and the church are Saša Crljić, Siniša Serdar, Aleksandar Reljić and Zoran Milovac. The church building has an iconostasis with icons , which is typical of Orthodox churches . However, the church is not painted with Byzantine frescoes .
swell
- Description of the church on the website of the Bihać-Petrovac Eparchy
- Description of the church on www.vodic.ba
- Article about the lightning strike on the church
- Article about the Church on Tromeđa.rs
- Article about the church on Drvar.info
Coordinates: 44 ° 22 '30.1 " N , 16 ° 23' 3.4" E