The Act of 2015

On May 29, 2015, the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church, at the recommendation of its Episcopal Council for North and South America, entered Archimandrite Sebastian (Dabovich) into the diptychs of the saints, together with Bishop Mardarije (Uskoković) of Libertyville. A solemn proclamation was celebrated in California that September, with Patriarch Irinej presiding. The two missionaries of Serbian America were glorified as a pair.

Tradition: Serbian Orthodox / American (glorified 2015)

The Decision of the Assembly

The act of glorification belongs to the Holy Assembly of Bishops (Sabor) of the Serbian Orthodox Church, the highest authority of that Church, at its regular session in the spring of 2015. On May 29, 2015, at the recommendation of the Episcopal Council of the Serbian Orthodox Church in North and South America, the Assembly resolved to enter into the diptychs (calendar) of the saints two clergymen of the Serbian-American mission: Archimandrite Sebastian (Dabovich) and Bishop Mardarije (Uskoković) (Serbian Orthodox Church, acts of the Holy Assembly of Bishops, May 2015, as reported at spc.rs and westsrbdio.org; eserbia.org, “Holy Missionaries Mardarije (Uskoković) and Sebastian (Dabovich) Newly Proclaimed Saints”; OCA, “Serbian Orthodox Church glorifies two North Americans,” oca.org). The Assembly established that the two would be liturgically commemorated — with the Divine Liturgy served and the proper hymnody (troparion and kontakion) chanted, and their icons venerated — and assigned their feast days: Bishop Mardarije on December 12 and Father Sebastian on November 30 (Serbian Church acts, May 2015, as reported at westsrbdio.org and eserbia.org; see Relics and Feast).

This decision is the constitutive act: from May 29, 2015, Sebastian is a glorified saint of the Orthodox Church. It is worth noting the language the Assembly and its reporters used — the two were honored as “clergymen and preachers of the Gospel, God-pleasing servants of the holy life, and inspirers of many missionaries” (eserbia.org, reporting the Assembly’s terms) — language that places their missionary labor at the center of their sanctity, exactly as this collection has read Sebastian’s life.

The Proclamation in California

The Assembly’s decision was solemnly proclaimed several months later in the United States, in the very land Sebastian had evangelized. The formal canonization service was celebrated in early September 2015 — the sources give the proclamation on September 4–5, 2015 — at the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Steven (St. Stephen) in Alhambra, California, with Patriarch Irinej of Serbia presiding, in the presence of Serbian and other Orthodox hierarchs, including representatives of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA, “OCA represented at canonization of Saints Sebastian and Mardarije,” oca.org; OCA, “Bishop Mardarije, Archimandrite Sebastian to be canonized September 5,” oca.org; the ledger.news coverage of the glorification). That the Serbian patriarch traveled to California to proclaim the glorification of the first American-born Orthodox priest is itself a fitting recognition: the honor was pronounced not only in Belgrade but in the country of Sebastian’s birth and labor.

[Disputed: the sources speak both of the glorification as accomplished on May 29, 2015 (the Assembly’s decision, the canonically constitutive act) and of a September 4–5, 2015 canonization/proclamation service in Alhambra; these are not rival datings of one event but two stages of one process — the conciliar decision in Serbia and its solemn liturgical proclamation in America — and the collection reports both, dating Sebastian’s glorification to 2015 (OCA, oca.org; Serbian Church acts, spc.rs; ledger.news).]

St. Mardarije of Libertyville, Glorified With Him

Sebastian was not glorified alone but together with Bishop Mardarije (Uskoković) of Libertyville (1889–1935), and the pairing is meaningful. Mardarije was the first bishop of the organized Serbian Orthodox Diocese in the United States and Canada, consecrated in 1926 and centered at the monastery of St. Sava at Libertyville, Illinois; like Sebastian, he was a missionary and preacher who labored to give the Serbs of America a rooted church life, and he died relatively young in 1935 (eserbia.org and Orthodox Christian Laity, “On the Life, Glorification, and Incorrupt Relics of St. Mardarije of Libertyville,” used as locators; OCA, “Serbian Orthodox Church glorifies two North Americans,” oca.org). Mardarije has no separate compendium in this repository, and the collection therefore treats him only in passing, as here: he is the second of the two Serbian-American missionary saints glorified in 2015, and his feast is kept on December 12 (distinct from Sebastian’s November 30).

The joint glorification frames both men as founders of Serbian Orthodoxy in America across two generations: Sebastian the pioneer of the mission era who built the first parishes within the Russian archdiocese, and Mardarije the first bishop of the later organized diocese. Reading them together, the Serbian Church honored not two isolated figures but the whole arc of its planting in the New World — from Sebastian’s Jackson of 1894 to Mardarije’s Libertyville of the 1920s (see The Serbian Mission Under the Russian Archdiocese). It is a properly Serbian-American canonization, of Serbian-American saints, proclaimed on American soil.

A Glorification From Within Living Memory

Sebastian was glorified seventy-five years after his death, within the memory of a Church that had never quite forgotten him — his parish at Jackson stood and served throughout, his books survived, and St. Nikolai’s tribute kept his name alive (see The St. Herman Press Biography). Per the repository’s habitual sobriety about recent glorifications, the collection offers its assessment of Sebastian’s stature as a contemporary judgment rather than the settled verdict of long reception (see American Orthodoxy’s Own Saints). But the act itself is not in doubt: by the decision of the highest authority of the Serbian Church, confirmed by solemn proclamation in California, Sebastian Dabović is a saint of the Orthodox Church, commemorated on November 30, his icon venerated and his service chanted.

See Also

• Relics and Feast — the relics (translated to Jackson in 2007) and the November 30 feast
• The Last Years and Žiča — the death and burial the glorification honors
• The Serbian Mission Under the Russian Archdiocese — Mardarije and the later Serbian diocese
• American Orthodoxy’s Own Saints — Sebastian within the North American synaxis
• The Saints of North America — the wider glorification record

References

• Serbian Orthodox Church. Acts of the Holy Assembly of Bishops, May 2015. spc.rs; westsrbdio.org, “Canonization of Sts. Mardarije & Sebastian”; eserbia.org, “Holy Missionaries Mardarije (Uskoković) and Sebastian (Dabovich) Newly Proclaimed Saints” — the decision of May 29, 2015, the terms, and the feast days.
• Orthodox Church in America. “Serbian Orthodox Church glorifies two North Americans”; “Bishop Mardarije, Archimandrite Sebastian to be canonized September 5”; “OCA represented at canonization of Saints Sebastian and Mardarije.” oca.org — used as locators for the September 2015 proclamation in Alhambra and OCA participation.
• “Holy Missionaries MARDARIJE (Uskokovic) and SEBASTIAN (Dabovich) Newly Proclaimed as Saints of the Orthodox Church!” orthochristian.com, no. 79651 — used as locator.
• Orthodox Christian Laity. “On the Life, Glorification, and Incorrupt Relics of St. Mardarije of Libertyville.” ocl.org — used as locator for Mardarije.