Biography

Father Oliver Subotić was born on 24 February 1977 in Nova Varoš, Serbia. As a young man he had only two passions: martial arts (he trained Shotokan karate, later Real Aikido) and information technology, above all computer graphics and animation. After finishing secondary school in his home town he enrolled at the Department of Information Technology of the Faculty of Organizational Sciences in Belgrade in 1996, fully intending to build his life in that field.

In the late 1990s he encountered Orthodox Christianity in its fullness through the writings of the Church Fathers, and that encounter became the turning point of his life. In the Risen Christ, as the saints of the Church bear witness to him, he found the answer to every question he had been carrying. He soon decided to devote himself to the service of the Church and, alongside his IT studies, enrolled at the Faculty of Orthodox Theology in Belgrade in 2000. He graduated in information technology in 2004 and in theology in 2005, took his master's degree in theology in 2008, and in 2011 defended his doctoral dissertation in sociology at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Belgrade.

While still a student he taught computer graphics and animation for two years at the Higher School of Electrical Engineering in Belgrade, then worked for a year in the information and documentation centre of the Faculty of Orthodox Theology. He taught religious education at the Ninth Belgrade Gymnasium (2007 to 2009) and briefly at the Computer Science Gymnasium (2009).

He was ordained deacon on 22 January 2008 at the Serbian Patriarchate in Belgrade by Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro and appointed to the Church of the Ascension in Žarkovo, Belgrade. He was ordained priest on the feast of Theophany 2011 by Patriarch Irinej of Serbia and served for nine years as rector of the newly founded fifth parish of Žarkovo. In 2020, by decision of Patriarch Irinej, he moved to the Church of St Alexander Nevsky in Dorćol, in the old centre of Belgrade.

At the end of 2007 the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church appointed him editor-in-chief of The Orthodox Missionary (Pravoslavni misionar), the Church's official missionary magazine for young people, which he edited for sixteen years (2008 to 2023). When the Centre for the Study and Use of Modern Technologies was founded within the Archdiocese of Belgrade-Karlovci in 2008 he became its first director, and remained in that post after the Centre passed under the direct authority of the Synod, until 2015. He served on the Archdiocesan Catechetical Board responsible for the quality of religious education in Belgrade secondary schools (2008 to 2014). When the Missionary Department of the Serbian Orthodox Church was established in 2014 he was appointed deputy to the Synod member in charge of it, and from 2016 he has co-ordinated, together with Fr Vojislav Bilbija, the Synod's programme of spiritual guidance for martial arts instructors.

For a short period he also chaired the St Sava Youth Fellowship of the Archdiocese (2008) and was editor-in-chief of the Information Service of the Serbian Orthodox Church (2020 to 2021). In 2024 he became the first director of the newly founded Missionary Department of the Archdiocese of Belgrade-Karlovci.

He has published sixteen books and taken part in dozens of conferences, panels and round tables in Serbia and abroad on the relationship between Orthodox Christianity and information technology, the mass media and globalization. Privacy in contemporary civilization and its importance for the freedom of the person has been a particular focus of his work, and he has several times represented the Serbian Orthodox Church in public initiatives concerning the use of modern information and communication technologies.

He is one of the founders of the Petar Mandić Endowment, a charitable foundation devoted to the life and legacy of the priestly ancestors of Nikola Tesla.

By God's blessing, he and his wife Mirjana have three children.