Sava (Trlajić)

Sava Trlajić was born Svetozar Trlajić in 1884 in Mol, a town in Bačka then belonging to Austria-Hungary. His parents were named Stefan and Jelisaveta. He attended primary school in his native town and the Serbian Orthodox gymnasium in Novi Sad, completed the Theological Seminary in Sremski Karlovci, and studied at the Orthodox Theological Faculty in Belgrade. In 1909 he was ordained deacon and later the same year priest. He then served as a parish priest in several places, including a period at Pećka Banja. In keeping with the discipline of the married parish clergy of the Serbian Orthodox Church, he lived as a married priest until his wife’s death, after which he entered the monastic life.

On 27 October 1927 he was tonsured a monk at Krušedol Monastery and received the name Sava. He was later raised to the rank of archimandrite. In 1934 the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church elected him to the episcopate, and he was consecrated as Bishop of Srem, a vicar bishopric. In 1938 he was appointed diocesan Bishop of Gornji Karlovac, residing at Plaški in Lika. That eparchy covered Lika, Kordun, and Banija, regions with a substantial Serbian Orthodox population that had long been exposed to political and confessional pressure. As bishop he worked to organize parish life, visit the faithful, and support clergy in a difficult borderland diocese.

The Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 and the creation of the Ustaše-ruled Independent State of Croatia placed his whole diocese under a regime that carried out forced conversions, expulsions, and mass murder directed at Serbs and at the Serbian Orthodox Church. Bishop Sava refused to abandon his see and withdraw to Serbia. In the summer of 1941 Ustaše authorities arrested him in Plaški. He was taken to Gospić and then to the Jadovno camp in the Velebit mountains, one of the early killing sites of the Independent State of Croatia. In August 1941 he was murdered there; surviving testimony indicates that he was among those thrown into a karst pit used for mass killings. His remains were never recovered.

In 1998 the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church, during the patriarchate of Pavle, glorified him as a hieromartyr. He is venerated as Saint Sava of Gornji Karlovac (Sveti sveštenomučenik Sava Gornjokarlovački), among the New Martyrs who suffered in the Independent State of Croatia during the Second World War. His memory is that of a diocesan bishop who would not desert his flock under persecution and of one of the many Orthodox clergy killed in 1941.