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was more than that. He was a prophet of God, not only of God’s mercy ,but of
God’s judgment”.

Ten years ago or so, the Bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres, made a
pilgrimage to Serbia and on his return to the UK he set up a fund named after
bishops Nikolai and George Bell designed to provide ?nancial assistance to
Serbian students. Later he took part in a ?lm about Bishop Nikolai made by
Serbian Orthodox Church council in Berlin.

The [former] Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said in
2001 that “Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic was for several generations of British
Anglicans, one of that group of unmistakable moral and spiritual giants who
brought something of the depth and challenge of the Orthodox world into the
West”.

Let us have some more quotations. The Church Times in 1920: “During
the four war years Dr Nikolai Velimirovic with his personality and his message
made such a strong impression on a large number of English people that they
had a feeling of a real loss when he went back to Serbia”. The same year Canon
J.A. Douglas, the Vice Chancellor of London University stated: “This author is
not only a provocative thinker and a stimulating personality but he has the rare
gift of practical application of ideas”. In 1921 Fynes Clinton, an Anglican priest,
said: “The impression he made with his personality, good qualities and the
work he carried out preaching in our cathedrals and churches is without prece-
dent for an Orthodox priest in this country”.

The ?rst non-Anglican to preach at St Paul’s

Dr Harold Buxton, the Bishop of Gibraltar, said in 1940: “I have known Dr
Nikolai since the great war when he preached at St Paul’s to ten or even twenty
thousand people. People in England, and especially in London, are still asking
where Dr Nikolai Velimirovic is now and what is he doing. He was the ?rst
non-Anglican who was allowed to preach at St Paul’s. If he came today the
whole of London would turn up to hear him”.

Let us end these quotations with Dame Rebecca West, one of the most
outstanding writers in the British Isles whose grave is near the Serbian Church
cemetery at Brookwood which I visit often to say a prayer. This great woman
writer said that Bishop Nikolai was “The most exceptional human being she
had ever met”.

The Second World War brought pain and sorrow to the Serbian people
and to Nikolai who was taken to the infamous Dachau concentration camp
with the Serbian Patriarch Gavrilo. After the liberation and release from Da-

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