Ecclesiastical writer

St. Sebastian Dabović

1863–1940 · 19th c. · 2 works

Sebastian Dabović (1863–1940) was a Serbian-American Orthodox priest, monk, and missionary, the first person born in the United States to be ordained an Orthodox Christian priest and a foundational figure of American Orthodoxy.

Born in San Francisco to Serbian immigrant parents, he studied at the Kiev and Saint Petersburg theological academies, was tonsured a monk in 1887, and ordained a hieromonk in 1892. He served as a travelling missionary across the western United States, organizing the first Serbian Orthodox parishes and church organization in the country — including the first Serbian parish at Jackson, California, in 1894 — and also ministered abroad before withdrawing to a monastery in Serbia.

His principal works are English-language writings introducing Orthodoxy to an American readership, including The Holy Orthodox Church and Lives of the Saints, together with accounts of Orthodox missions, written for an audience largely unfamiliar with Eastern Christianity.

He reposed at the Žiča monastery in Serbia in 1940; his relics were returned to the United States in 2007 and enshrined at the church he had founded in Jackson, California. The Serbian Orthodox Church glorified him as a saint in 2015, and he is commemorated on 30 November.

Sources: Orthodox Church in America — Venerable Sebastian Dabovich · Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Western America — Glorification of Sts Mardarije & Sebastian