Q4102100

Varnava Nastić was born Vojislav Nastić on 31 January 1914 in Gary, Indiana, to Atanasije and Zorka Nastić, Serbian immigrants who had come to the United States for industrial work. The family kept close ties to the Serbian Orthodox Church. In 1923 they returned to Europe and settled in Sarajevo, then in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. There Vojislav completed secondary schooling and later studied at the Orthodox Theological Faculty of the University of Belgrade. In the years immediately before the Second World War he entered monastic life, receiving the name Varnava, and was ordained deacon and priest.

After the war, on 20 May 1947, he was consecrated Bishop of Hvosno, a titular see, and appointed vicar bishop. Still a young man, he became known for pastoral energy and for insisting that the Church remain independent of the new communist authorities. That stance led to his arrest in 1948. He was sentenced to a long term and held in several prisons, among them the severe facility at Zenica. Although later released, he was never given a diocesan see and lived under restriction, moving among monasteries.

His final years were spent at Beočin Monastery on Fruška Gora in Vojvodina. He died there on 12 November 1964, his health having been broken by imprisonment and hardship. In 2005 the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church glorified him as a holy confessor. He is commemorated on 12 November and is remembered as a witness to Orthodox faith under twentieth-century persecution in the Balkans.