1. Rev. Dr. Darko Spasojevic was born in 1976 in Montbéliard, France, and grew up in Velika Snjegotina, near Banja Luka in the Republic of Srpska. His father died when he was twelve, and he and his sister, Tanja, were raised by their mother, Vidosava, in a single-parent household.

In 1991 he entered St. Arsenius Seminary in Sremski Karlovci, Serbia, completing his secondary studies there in 1996. He went on to the Faculty of Theology in Belgrade, and after a year transferred to the St. Sava Orthodox Faculty of Theology in Libertyville, Illinois, where he completed his undergraduate education in 2001. Graduate studies followed at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestwood, New York, where he earned a Master of Arts and a Master of Theology.

On November 3, 2003, he was ordained a Deacon, and one month later, on December 4, he was ordained a Priest by His Eminence Metropolitan Christopher at Holy Resurrection Serbian Orthodox Cathedral in Chicago, Illinois. He was appointed parish priest of the Cathedral’s Western parish, and on November 1, 2008, Metropolitan Christopher named him Dean of the Cathedral, a position he holds to this day.

Alongside his work at the Cathedral, Fr. Darko serves as Rector of St. Sava Academy in Chicago, where he is responsible for the school’s governance, board relations, and fundraising, and where he played a crucial role in the acquisition of the Academy’s property. Within the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of New Gracanica and Midwestern America, he serves as Dean of the Northern Chicago Deanery and as a member of the Diocesan Ecclesiastical Court.

Fr. Darko received his PhD in Theology and Ethics from Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, located on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. His dissertation, Public and Political Nature and Praxis of Church and Theology, argues from an Eastern Orthodox perspective that the history of salvation and politics are inseparable, and that the Church is indispensable to the former. The political is understood broadly as everything that touches the affairs of citizens. Through the liturgy and sacraments, the Church effects salvation in holistic and organic ways, resisting the spiritualization and privatization of faith. When faith is reduced to the private and the spiritual, as it often is, it becomes increasingly difficult to see how it is relevant to real life, or why it matters at all. Using the categories of time and space, both highly operative in theology and political theory, the dissertation demonstrates the complexity of space and the importance of how we imagine time, and shows how these categories shape our thinking about concepts such as human rights and practices such as political and theological forgiveness.

Fr. Darko is the proud father of Vasilisa.