Mihailo Petrović (Chetnik)

Mihailo Petrović (Serbian Cyrillic: Михаило Петровић; Gradac, Serbia, 30 June 1871 – Raška, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 28 April 1941) was an early member of the Serbian Chetnik Organization and the Society of Saint Sava. He participated in the early Chetnik struggles to liberate Old Serbia from Ottoman, Albanian and Bulgarian treachery (1903–1912), the Balkan Wars (1912–1913) and the Great War (1914–1918).

Petrović was born in the nearby village of Gradac, just outside of the town of Raška, in 1871. His mother died when he was a youngster and his father, a military man, was killed in the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885. As a 14-year-old he went to Belgrade to live with his uncle Stanojlo Petrović and aunt Draginja, who carefully tended to his education. Mihailo Petrović graduated from the First Belgrade Gymnasium and the School of Theology at the Saint Sava's Seminary, better known as Bogoslovija, part of University of Belgrade in 1895. His professor was Archimandrite Firmilijan Drazic, also the Rector of the seminary. That same year Mihailo married Leposava Obradinović, the daughter of Vujica Obradinović, a wealthy Belgrade industrialist, and then joined the priesthood in the ranks of married men. He settled first at Ivanjica, where he had relatives. In 1900 he officiated the funerals of Mihailo Mihailović and Smiljana Mihailović (née Petrović), the parents of seven-year-old Dragoljub Mihailović. Then, he was transferred to a parish in Raška where he remained a priest until retirement.

In 1904 when King Peter I was crowned, Very Reverend Mihailo Petrović was an invited guest of the new king at the grand reception in Belgrade. During the Serbian uprising of 1904 in Old Serbia and Macedonia, the Balkan Wars (1912 and 1913), and the Great War, he served as a military pastor to the fighting men at the front lines.^[1] He also wrote for the Glasnik (Herald) of the Serbian Orthodox Church as a regular contributor soon after becoming a priest. Among his colleagues at the time were Milan Rakić, Jovan Dučić, Nikolaj Velimirović, and other prominent Serbian men of letters, diplomats, and theologians. He was an outspoken critic of Vatican's attempt to legalize a Concordat with the Serbian Orthodox Church that took the life of Patriarch Varnava.^[2]

Mihailo and Leposava Petrović had eight children four girls (Katarina, Radmila, Natalija, and Vidosava) and four boys (Ljubiša, Dragiša, Milan, and Alexander).

Of the four Mr. and Mrs. Mihailo Petrović sons, only Milan (Danica) had issue: Michael M. Petrovich, who now lives in Wheatley, Ontario.

He joined early the Serbian Chetnik Organization, formed to rid the Turk from the Balkans and consequently mainland Europe. Petrović was also a member of the Association of Reserve Officers and Warriors that commissioned a number of monuments to the fallen Chetnik fighters in the mid-1920s. It was an opportunity to praise the Chetnik leaders' effort for the liberation of Old Serbia and to criticize the post-war neglect of Serbian war veterans, to attack those who too easily forgot the great sufferings the Serbian people in their plight for emancipation.

The first reliable data about early Chetnik activity came with the fall of Communism in the early 1990s, written by Vladan Virijević, a professor from Kosovo-Metohija, who mentions archpriest Mihailo Petrović "as an old warrior" who came to bless Chetnik standards, banners and flags in villages and towns throughout Raška in 1937 at a time of the Concordat crisis in Yugoslavia.

Archpriest Petrović was Bishop of Žiča Nikolaj Velimirović's deputy (arhijerejski namesnik/Bishop's Dean) for the Studenica district with its seat in Raška from 1919 to 1920 and later from 1936 to 1941 before Bishop Nikolai and Patriarch Gavrilo were arrested by Gestapo agent and kept under surveillance in a monastery until 1943 when they were both sent to Dachau. He also held the same post (bishop's dean) during the time of Bishop Jefrem Bojović during his tenure from 1920 to 1933. As a contributing editor to the Glasnik (Herald) of the Serbian Patriarchate of Belgrade, Petrović often emphasized in his articles the continued security threats Serbs faced in the region, writing about the need to organize armed or paramilitary defences against those national threats. Petrović was calling for a continued role for the Chetniks in the southern regions of Serbia throughout the 1930s.^[3]

During World War II his son Alexander Petrović, a freedom-fighter, and daughter Vidosava "Vida" Milenković (née Petrović) harboured and hid a Jewish family from the Nazis in Raška. Alexander was captured during the early part of the war and lost his life at Mauthausen's Hartheim in 1944. He was 27.

The Petrović and Milenković families are honored by Israel's Yad Vashem memorial as one of the Righteous Among the Nations, an honour given to non-Jews who behaved with heroism in trying to save Jews from the genocide of the Holocaust.^[4]

• List of Chetnik voivodes