From the Small Serbian Monastery to the London Cathedral: Father Nicholai Velimirovich on a Mission to Great Britain in the First World War

• Main Author: Slavica Popović Filipović
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Christian Cultural Centre “Dr. Radovan Bigović” 2021-07-01
• Series: The Nicholai Studies
• Subjects: nicholai velimirovich; the great war; great britain; serbian relief fund; scottish women’s hospitals
• Online Access: https://nicholaistudies.org/files/pdfs/2021/2/Nicholai%20Studies%20%282021%29%20I%2C%202%2C%20267-342%20Popovi%C4%87%20Filipovi%C4%87%2C%20Mission.pdf

The life and work of father Nicholai Velimirovich (1880–1956) is a limitless historical source, which has been encouraging, for the past 100 years, various researches in the Serbian, English, and other languages around the world. Velimirovich, as a person, and his numerous writings can be viewed from different aspects. This article, that is dedicated to father Nicholai Velimirovich, is an attempt to highlight his mission and role in the Great Britain during the First World War. In order to better understand the importance of his mission, we have described the establishment and operation of the Serbian Relief Fund, the Committee of the Serbian Red Cross Society, and the Scottish Women’s Hospitals in their medical and humanitarian missions for the Serbian people in the Great War. Apart from the significant role of father Nicholai Velimirovich, we remember many other great humanists and humanitarians working with and within these various medical and humanitarian missions. With their unforgettable achievements they helped treat people. and to mitigate the terrible suffering of the Serbian people during the great epidemic of typhus in Serbia, and during the great Exodus through the rugged Albanian mountains, during the exile on Corfu, at the Salonica Front, North Africa, Corsica, and France, as well as on the Russian Front, and in Dobruja and even after the Great War. As a representative of the small Serbian nation, father Nicholai Velimirovich held arousing speeches, religious sermons, and wrote numerous literary religious writings, and thereby he confirmed that in the midst of wartime conflagration it is possible for great humane achievements to appear. That is why that impressive spiritual dimension of the mission, which included father Velimirovich and his contemporaries, did not cease to continue to inspire historians, writers and other authors — in the past, present, and the future.