Jovan Ćulibrk

His Grace Јован
Bishop
Bishop Jovan in 2012
Church	Serbian Orthodox Church
Diocese	Eparchy of Slavonia
Installed	13 September 2014
Predecessor	Sava Jurić
Orders
Ordination	1992
Personal details
Born	Neven Ćulibrk (1965-04-16) 16 April 1965 Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia
Denomination	Eastern Orthodoxy
Previous post(s)	Eparchy of Lipljan (2011–2014)
Alma mater	University of Zagreb Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Jovan Ćulibrk (Serbian Cyrillic: Јован Ћулибрк; born 16 April 1965), born Neven Ćulibrk (Невен Ћулибрк) is a Serbian Orthodox bishop who has been serving as the head of the Eparchy of Slavonia. He is a former head of the Eparchy of Lipljan and he was also an active music critic and author about rock 'n' roll and pop culture.

Biography

Born in Zenica which was a part of Yugoslavia at the time; he finished elementary school and highschool in Bosanska Gradiška.

He studied literature in Banja Luka, then literature and South Slavic languages at the Faculty of Philosophy University of Zagreb, from which he graduated in 1991 with a thesis on the work of Miloš Crnjanski. His work on Crnjanski was awarded the Branko Award by Matica Srpska. He studied theology at University of Belgrade Faculty of Orthodox Theology and Faculty of Orthodox Theology in Srbinje.

He enrolled in a master's degree in Jewish cultural studies at the Yad Vashem Memorial and Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Bishop Jovan defended his master's thesis under the guidance of David Banker, head of the Holocaust International Research Institute in Yad Vashem.

In the 1980s, he was an active rock critic, interested in contemporary art, and published a number of essays and articles about pop culture and rock 'n' roll.

In 1991 he entered the Savina Monastery as a novice and in 1992, he moved to the Cetinje Monastery, where on the eve of Nativity of John the Baptist 1993 he became a monk under the name Jovan. From 1993 to 2003, he lectured on Serbian and Slovene literature, general history, and was also the secretary of Theological Seminary of St. Peter of Cetinje. On October 31, 1995 in the Stanjevići monastery, Metropolitan Amfilohije Radović ordained him as ahierodeacon and on June 16, 1997 he was ordained hieromonk. In 1997 he was appointed monk of Moračnik Monastery. He worked on the renovation of churches and monasteries on Lake Skadar. In 1998 he participated in the creation of the Radio Svetigora, the first radio channel of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and since then has remained its employee. Since June 1999 he has been at the Patriarchate of Peć in Kosovo. He supervised relations of the Church with the KFOR and United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo. He worked for the salvation of religious objects, refugee protection, calculating and determining the number of victims, wounded, lost, expelled and working on the documentation of the suffering of Serbs civilians. As a member of the State Delegation of Yugoslavia, in January 2001, visited Israel and prestented his viewpoints on the Kosovo Question. In the same year, this connection went to Italy to build cooperation with Italian institutions for the protection of the heritage of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo and Metohija.

In 2002 he visited Italy as a guest of the Italian parachute brigade Folgore and established good relations of the brigade and the Serbian Church. In October 2002, he was introduced to the reserve composition of the 63rd Airborne Brigade, where he received military training and non-commissioned officer rank.

In 2002 participated in the third international conference about Jasenovac concentration camp in Jerusalem. He led Serbian delegations to international conferences on the Holocaust in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010. In 2000s he served at a number of temples and monasteries in the Holy Land, including Sarandar Monastery on Mount of Temptation. In 2006 in Israel, he gave lectures on Breakup of Yugoslavia and interethnic relations at the Vidal Sassoon Center in Jerusalem. On March 14–15, 2007, as a representative of the Serbian Orthodox Church, he participated in the 6th meeting between Orthodoxy and Judaism at Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.

In his role as the director of the Jasenovac Committee, Jovan Ćulibrk has claimed that the Jasenovac concentration camp was the "worst of all camps and extermination sites in WWII". Ćulibrk has put forward the claim that the role of the Nazi quisling regime of Milan Nedić in the Holocaust in Serbia is "yet to be revealed by historians". In light of the extensive literature which exists about the regime of Milan Nedić, this has been understood as part of the politics of rehabilitation of collaborators which were persecuted by the antifascist Partisans after WWII in present-day Serbia.

On July 12, 2007 in Cetinje he was erected as Protosyncellus. Widely developing the work of the Jasenovac Commission of the Serbian Church to promote the worldwide awareness of the Genocide of Serbs. In 2009, he gave two lectures on Jewish history and culture at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade and he gave lectures again on Jewish culture in Belgrade in 2020.

On September 4, 2011, he was consecrated Bishop of Lipljanski, vicar Patriarch of Serbia. The consecration was performed by the Serbian Patriarch Irinej. On September 13 of the same year, in the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity in Pakrac, he was enthroned.

He organised and led the project of adapting poems written by Nikolaj Velimirović into rock music album, titled Pesme iznad istoka i zapada (Songs beyond East and West), which gathered a number of Serbian and Yugoslav rock bands.

In the early 2000s, Ćulibrk contributed to the efforts of the Serbian Orthodox Church for the rehabilitation of Nikolaj Velimirović, a controversial figure due to his extensive Anti-Judaistic rhetoric in the 1930s. Ćulibrk and the SOC in general have faced criticism for not addressing antisemitism within the SOC and the work of figures like Velimirović.

In 2004 he was awarded Golda Meir Award and in 2020 he was awarded the Israeli order "Knight of Ladino".

Ćulibrk has emphasized the necessity for political and military victories of the Bosnian Serb community over that of spiritual victory despite military defeat which other figures in Republika Srpska have emphasized. According to Ćulibrk, this victory is reflected in the "cleansing" of a part of multiethnic Bosnia by the Serb forces. As such Ćulibrk has claimed that "Serbian Sarajevo is also the symbol of a town cleansed by fire".

Bishop Jovan speaks English, Russian, Yiddish and uses German, Greek and several Slavic languages.

See also

• Eparchy of Slavonia

External links

• Interview with bishop Jovan for Croatian Radio Television