At peace at home

JACKSON -- After 67 years abroad, Father Sebastian Dabovich crossed the Atlantic Ocean one last time to be back home with his flock.

On Saturday, inside a small foothills church choked with incense and sweltering from the triple-digit temperatures outside, people from across the United States stood shoulder to singing the Trisagion, one of the oldest prayers in Christianity, as Dabovich's remains were returned to the soil of his native California.

His bones were washed in rose water and white wine. He was given a new set of priest's vestments to replace the set that decayed along with his body after he was originally buried in 1940.

Upon his earthly remains, a gold cross was placed, which high bishops and the laity alike took turns kissing. Among Orthodox Christians, God's work moves not only through the living but through the remains of holy men as well.

Though in his life, he'd attained the rank of archimandrite, one of the highest stations a monk can achieve, the 200 or so people gathered for the special liturgy in his honor saw him as something between a founding father and a spiritual beacon.

"Without him, there would be no Serbian Orthodox Church in America today," said Father Tom Paul, a protodeacon at St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church.

Atop the highest hill in the city, the church in Jackson was consecrated in 1894. It's believed to be the oldest Serbian Orthodox Church in the Western Hemisphere. Dabovich, many assert, was the first American ever to be ordained as an Orthodox priest.

Dabovich, who was born to Serbian-immigrant parents in San Francisco in 1863, first came to Jackson in 1893 to baptize a Serbian baby. At the time, he ministered at a Russian Orthodox Church in San Francisco.

The older gravestones in the cemetery of St. Sava tell much of the story of the Serbian migration to the Mother Lode.

Most Serbian immigrants coming to Amador County were born in the Bay of Kotor, then part of the easternmost reaches of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now part of modern Montenegro. Unrest there and in neighboring Bosnia around the 1860s led many to seek refuge overseas.

Most died before the age of 30 in places like Angel's Camp, one of the many foothill towns fueling California's Gold Rush. The Serbian population boomed during that time, accounting for more than a third of Amador County's population until the mines were closed at the start of World War II, said Father Steve Tumbas, a deacon at St. Sava.

Though the income from the mines fostered the community, many perished in the shafts. California's deadliest mining accident, the Argonaut Mine disaster of 1922, claimed the lives of 47 miners in Jackson -- 10 of whom were Serbs.

After founding several other churches in the United States, Dabovich returned to his ancestral homeland to serve as a chaplain to the Serbian Army during World War I. He spent his last years at a monastery in central Serbia.

Getting his remains back to Jackson took 10 years of careful prodding, said Paul.

"It was like getting a law passed," he said. "You have to go around lobbying everyone until you find someone who says, 'Yeah, you're right,' and then runs with it."

He'd grab anyone he could and lay out the case for bringing Dabovich's remains home, he said. People with connections to the patriarchy back in Serbia, he said, got special attention.

Two years ago, Paul found that sympathetic ear. The bishop of the Zhicha monastery called him. The monastery was expanding, and members were digging up the graveyard where Dabovich was buried to make room for a new building.

Paul wrote a letter, telling of the congregation's desire to see their founding priest back home. The bishop presented the idea to other bishops in Serbia, who agreed Dabovich's remains ought to return to America, he said.

Paul -- his grandparents anglicized his name from the original Pavlovich -- said Dabovich's work inspired him to join the diaconate.

He spent his career as an undercover narcotics officer in several police departments around the Bay Area and Amador County, he said. When he retired, he said, the same desire to help people led him to trade his badge and gun for a vestment and cross. But there were some hurdles.

Before Paul could be ordained, the bishop asked him a question about his past.

Church canons forbid anyone who's committed murder from wearing the cloth. Having served as a Marine in Vietnam, had he ever killed anyone?

Paul told the bishop he wasn't sure.

"I shot at them, and they shot at me," he said. "I'm still here, and I don't know if they're still there."

That was good enough for the bishop, Paul said.

Paul sold all the guns he'd acquired as a police officer and took the money to Serbia to buy his first set of vestments.

Quoting from the book of Isaiah, Paul beat his "swords into plowshares," he said.

Though Paul, Tumbas and many others in the Serbian Orthodox community are overjoyed to have the remains of the founding priest back in Jackson, some in the Serbian Orthodox community in the States think the church should go a step further and proclaim Dabovich a saint.

It's a rare move, but not one without precedent. Another Serbian American monk who went back to Serbia during World War II and is believed to have been poisoned by the Yugoslav secret police following the war was made a saint two years ago, Tumbas said.

Tumbas said local priests have already been referring to Dabovich as Saint Sebastian. He hopes the mother church back in Serbia will start following suit.

"Poets and writers sometimes die in poverty, and it's 100 years later that the beauty of their work is recognized," he said. "Sometimes, it's the same way in the church."

About the writer:

• The Bee's Stan Oklobdzija can be reached at (916) 608-7453 or stano@sacbee.com.