Župnička djelatnost Šime Starčevića
The pastoral activity of Šime Starčević

Summary/Abstract: Starčević’s biographers do not know how to answer the question about how one child from Žitnik went out into the world without some support in his own environment. He was an outstanding student who felt a special mission in his soul. Indeed throughout the whole of his work he felt that he surpassed every “working place” and that he felt as though he had been sent for his people. This led him to choose a priestly vocation and mission. We have no kind of indication that he had that in mind when he set out into the world. Only when he had completed higher education, did he apply at the Senj Seminary, where he finished theology and was ordained as a priest. Šime Starčević was for all of his life consumed with the thought that the cultural level of the people depended on its linguistic culture, with regards to literature. Thereupon that the literature of a nation is even more valuable the more it is imbued with God’s word. These were the starting points which marked the whole of his priestly and academic work. As he dealt with language and literature and sermons and catechisms. In these fields he saw that there was a lot to do. And in this he was relentless until the end. He struggled for his principles to the end, in good times and bad. This struggle went out from the place where he was a priest. However if he was in some other place or in some other service, he would equally defend himself, encountering strong support and also fierce opposition. When he died, the parishioners carried his dead body through all the city’s streets and the publisher of his homily in 1918 noted that there was a belief among the people that his body would remain intact in the grave. However in 1957, when the parish church in Karlobag was demolished, the bones of the deceased were thrown into the rubbish.

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