Hieromartyr Hieromartyr Platon (Jovanović), Bishop of Banja Luka

CRITICAL: date corrected from an internally inconsistent "April 5 O.S." (the number matched the N.S. date, not O.S.) to the correct April 22 O.S./May 5 N.S.

Hieromartyr Platon (secular name Milivoje Jovanović) was born September 29, 1874, in Belgrade. He studied at gymnasiums in Vranje and Niš, then at Belgrade Theological Seminary, where he was tonsured with the name Platon (1895). He was ordained a hieromonk in 1896 and sent to the Serbian Compound in Moscow; from 1896–1901 he studied at the Moscow Theological Academy, graduating as a candidate of theology — giving him deep personal ties to the Russian Church.

On returning to Serbia he served as superior of Rakovica Monastery, taught at the seminaries of Aleksinac and Jagodina, and was raised to archimandrite. He served as a military chaplain during the Balkan Wars and World War I. From 1932–1938 he ran the monastery print house in Sremski Karlovci and edited the "Herald of the Serbian Patriarchate." In 1936 he was consecrated Bishop of Moravica; in 1938 he took the see of Ohrid-Bitola, and in December 1939 was transferred to the see of Banja Luka.

After the Ustaše-run "Independent State of Croatia" was proclaimed in 1941, its authorities ordered Bishop Platon to leave his diocese solely because he was ethnically Serbian. He categorically refused, declaring he would remain with his flock, and unsuccessfully sought the intervention of the local Roman Catholic bishop, Jozo Garić. On the night of May 5, 1941, Ustaše paramilitaries seized him together with the priest Dušan Subotić, drove them out of the city, tortured them, and drowned them in the Vrbas River. His mutilated body was found May 23, 1941, near the village of Kumsale. He was glorified by the Bishops' Council of the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1998.