POPOVITCH, JUSTIN

POPOVITCH, JUSTIN, theologian, monk. Popovitch was the most important Serbian Orthodox theologian of the 20th c., widely venerated in his own country and particularly among the monks of Greece and Mt. Athos (q.v.). His name is familiar to the rest of the Orthodox oikoumene (q.v.) as well. Confined to house arrest by the Yugoslav government from the beginning of the Tito regime, he still managed to write extensively on patristic (q.v.) themes, edit a massive and scholarly collection of Orthodox saints’ (q.v.) lives (Zhitie Svyatikh) in twelve volumes, and leave his impress on the currently rising generation of Serbian church leaders, notably Bishops Afanasy Jevtitch and Amfilochii Radovitch.