His Holiness Patriarch Irinej (Gavrilović) of Serbia
was born in the village of Vidova, near Čačak in 1930 by his father
Zdravko and mother Milijana. When he was baptized he was named Miroslav. He
finished the elementary school in his village, and then in Čačak he
completed the high school. After the end of the high school he enrolled and
completed a seminary in Prizren, and then he finished the Faculty of Orthodox
Theology in Belgrade. Upon graduation, he went into the army. Following his
return from the army he was soon appointed a professor of the Prizren seminary.
Before taking the office of the professor in October 1959, at the Rakovica
monastery he was tonsured by His Holiness Patriarch German, gaining the
monastic name of Irinej.
That same month, on St. Petka's day, October 27, 1959 at the
Ružica church on the Kalemegdan, he was ordained to the rank of hieromonk.
While he worked as the professor at the Prizren seminary he was sent to the
postgraduate studies in Athens. In 1969 he was appointed as the head of the
monastic school at the monastery of Ostrog, from where he returned back to
Prizren and there he became a rector of the Prizren Seminary. From that duty,
in 1974 he was elected for a vicar bishop of His Holiness Patriarch of Serbia
with the title of Bishop of Moravica. A year later, in 1975 he was elected for
Bishop of Niš, where he has been until becoming our Patriarch in 2010.
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