NEW BISHOP SERAFIM OF CHICAGO: If we live by one commandment, nothing in life will be difficult for us. Not even preserving family, children, and friends in difficult times (VIDEO)

Chicago recently got a new bishop, Serafim, who will henceforth serve as the vicar bishop of Kostajnica for the New Gračanica diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church in America. The title he bears comes from his homeland from which he once set out on a spiritual journey around the world. Archimandrite Serafim was born in 1978 in Zagreb where he was baptized as Bojan Baltić, in a family with roots in Banja.

He moved to the United States in 1995 due to the war. Here, in a distant world, in addition to electrical engineering and computer science, which he was interested in as a young man and later studied, he began to be interested in spiritual things, and a key encounter took place in the monastery of Okali in Florida, where he met the famous spiritual father, Elder Ephraim of Philotheou, which led him to first understand, and then accept the monastic calling.

After completing his undergraduate studies, he embarked on a journey during which he visited several Orthodox monasteries throughout America, Serbia, and Greece. In the late 1990s, he met Bishop Longin (Krčo) and with his blessing, in 2003, he enrolled in the Seminary in Jordanville, New York, which he graduated in 2008 with honors.

During his studies, he was tonsured a monk at the monastery of Nova Gračanica, and in the same year, he was ordained a hierodeacon and became a priest. During his service at the monastery, he translated the works of Saint Nicholas of Velimirović into English. To better understand the life of a monk, he spent 6 months in Hilandar monastery.

Upon returning to America, he worked with children and youth in diocesan summer camps and youth councils at the monastery of Nova Gračanica. He also served as the administrator of Saint Sava Seminary in Libertyville, while at the same time taking care of the missionary parish of Saint Petka in Nashville. For the last three years, before being ordained a bishop, he served at the Cathedral Church of Saint Sava in Milwaukee.

In the meantime, he obtained a master’s degree in public administration at DeVry University and a degree in computer and information science at the University of Florida. Even before Serbian Patriarch Porfirije ordained him a bishop on October 13 of this year at the Patriarchate in Belgrade, Serafim was considered by the Serbian people in America as a man from whom you can always hear good spiritual advice and calming words.

Listen to what he said in an interview with our editor Antonije Kovačević on those essential, primordial, as well as on the most current topics:

On the greatest challenges of the modern age
On marriage and preserving the family
On raising and educating children in America in the conditions of liberal education and new, imposed value systems
On meetings with Elder Ephraim and monastic life
On Serbs as (un)believing people, the qualities that adorn us and those that do not suit us
On the Serbian Church in America, on serving in the English language
On what he appreciates most and what he criticizes most about Serbs from the diaspora
On the life and work of Nikolaj Velimirović and the controversies that some spread about him