Stevan Baković

Stevan Baković (Ožegovac, 1794—Sarajevo, 1893), popularly known as Prota Baković, was a priest of the Serbian Orthodox Church, who spent most of his ministry in Sarajevo. He is one of the most deserving people for the construction of the Cathedral in Sarajevo, whose foundations he personally consecrated. He was appreciated and respected by the people regardless of religion and ethnicity, and his death represented a great loss for the Serbian people in Sarajevo at the time. The people of Sarajevo considered him to be a man of great character and a true patriot, and a model priest for the church and the people.

Biography Prota Stevan Baković was born in 1794 in the village of Ožegovac in Herzegovina, at the time Eyalet of Bosnia, in an Orthodox family, to father Prodan and mother Anđelija. He did not spend much time in his native village because shortly after his birth, his family moved to the village of Crljenice, which today belongs to the municipality of Pljevlja in Montenegro. After he was ten years old, around 1804, his parents took him to the Holy Trinity Monastery to begin his education, under the then Metropolitan Jeremije of Herzegovina. In 1812, Stevan married Jelka, the daughter of Trivko Zec from Foča, and decided to devote the rest of his life to a priestly vocation. The following year, he was preparing for the priestly rank, and continued to live with his wife in the monastery of the Holy Trinity.