Hierarch Nikolaj (Velimirović), Bishop of Žiča and Ohrid

IMPORTANT CORRECTION: the previously listed contaminated 3-date list ("December 6/May 9/July 29," belonging to St. Nicholas the Wonderworker of Myra) had nothing to do with this entirely different, 20th-century saint, and has been fully replaced with his own correct date. The category has been corrected from "righteous" to "hierarch."

Nikola Velimirović was born to a peasant family in the village of Lelić, Serbia. He proved an exceptional student — studying theology in Belgrade and Switzerland, earning a doctorate in theology from the University of Bern (1908) and a further doctorate in philosophy from Oxford. He also studied at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy (1910), where his preaching reportedly impressed Russian hierarchs. Taking monastic vows, he quickly became known as one of the most gifted Orthodox preachers and writers of his era, earning the epithet "the Serbian Chrysostom." He authored a vast body of theological, homiletic, and devotional literature (including the widely translated "Prologue from Ohrid" and "Prayers by the Lake") and founded a lay spiritual revival movement (the "God-worshippers' movement") to strengthen Orthodox faith among rural Serbs.

He was consecrated Bishop of Žiča in 1919–1920, then held the see of Ohrid-Bitola (1920–1934), returning to the see of Žiča in 1934 and remaining there until his death. During World War II, as one of the most prominent and outspoken clergy of the Serbian Church, he was arrested on Hitler's personal order (November 18, 1942) alongside Patriarch Gavrilo, held first at Vojlovica Monastery near Pančevo, then transferred on September 14, 1944, to the Dachau concentration camp, where the two were held in a special "Ehrenbunker" (section for high-status prisoners) until liberation by American forces on May 8, 1945.

After the war he did not return to communist Yugoslavia, emigrating instead to the USA, where he continued writing, teaching, and serving Serbian émigré communities until his death in 1956 at a Russian monastery in South Canaan, Pennsylvania. He is buried at the St. Sava Monastery cemetery in Libertyville, Illinois. He was locally canonized by the Šabac-Valjevo Diocese on March 18, 1987, and formally canonized by the full Bishops' Assembly of the Serbian Orthodox Church on May 19, 2003 (glorification ceremony held May 24, 2003, at the Church of St. Sava, Belgrade). His relics were translated to his native Lelić in 1991. The Russian Orthodox Church added him to its own calendar in 2003.

His feast is kept on March 5/18; also April 20/May 3 (translation of relics from the USA to Serbia).