This year, Protopresbyter Stavrophore Sergios (Srđan) Janošević is celebrating 15 years since the establishment of the Orthodox parish in Seychelles, where he is the vicar and first serving priest, aged 77.
The parish was created by His Eminence Metropolitan Demetrios (Zacharegas) of Tanzania and Seychelles under the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa, who asked Father Sergios, who is Serbian and lives in the island nation, to become a priest and lead the Orthodox community as part of the African mission.
Orthodox clergymen of different nationalities had come to Seychelles previously as prisoners or visitors, but a parish had not been established. The most notable spiritual father who was exiled by the British in these Indian Ocean islands for one year was Archbishop Makarios III of Cyprus, from March 1956 to April 1957, as he supported the independence of Cyprus from British rule. He came back later as a free man and even hoped to build a home for retirement and a church, but passed away before this could be realized. Today there is a foundation dedicated to him for aid to the children of Seychelles: www.makariosfoundation.com.
The Greek Orthodox Church in Seychelles is home to Serbian, Russian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian and Seychellois believers who reside in the country. Also, many visitors come from time to time from all around the world to see this small but unique church and give glory to God.
Srđana Janošević is Father Sergios’ daughter and leads the small choir of the church, which is a chapel located in her home. Plans to build a church still remain in the works. She is an editor for the Seychelles News Agency and was previously Chief Press Secretary of the President of the Republic of Seychelles, Associate Lecturer in English Studies at the University of Seychelles, TV reporter for the Seychelles Broadcasting Corporation and a correspondent for Agence France Presse.
Srđana will speak about providential journey towards the formation of the Orthodox community in which she was a member of the association board, and how it developed over time into a church that has unique life and spirit today and the people who helped build it.
She will also talk about her father as a very distinctive priest, who was called to this spiritual work when he reached his pension age, and also about her late mother, Presbytera Vesna, who was a deeply prayerful priest’s wife and a mother to all faithful in the church. Srđana Janošević will explain how Father Sergios’ ordination was inadvertently the answer to her family’s prayers over many years, in a talk on Monday 23rd September at 7pm in the premises of the AEM Missionary Department.
