Durić finished middle school and the Electronic School (so called at the time) also in Vareš. He enrolled in the Theological High School in 1984 and graduated in 1988 in Belgrade, after which he enrolled at the Faculty of Theology and then in 1989 went to serve his military service in Zagreb. As a student he participated in the 1992 protests against the president of Serbia, Slobodan Milošević.[1][2]
Career
Durić was ordained a monk on 23 June 1992 in the Ostrog Monastery, from where he went with Bishop Atanasije to the renovated Tvrdoš Monastery near Trebinje. He was ordained a hierodeacon on 17 July 1992 and a hieromonk on 19 August 1992. He became the abbot of Tvrdoš on 12 May 1996 and the archimandrite on 19 August 1997. He graduated from the Faculty of Theology in 1994, and from 1995 to 1997 he was in postgraduate studies in Athens.[1]
Bishop Grigorije administered the Metropolitanate of Dabar-Bosna from 2015 until 2017, and on several occasions he was a member of the Holy Synod of Bishops. At the regular session of the Holy Synod in May 2018, he was elected bishop of the Diocese of Frankfurt and all of Germany (today the Diocese of Düsseldorf and all of Germany). He was enthroned on 16 September 2018 at the Church of St. Sava in Düsseldorf.[3] Since his arrival to Germany, the Serbian Orthodox Church has increasingly started doing services in German.[4]
On 29 October 2014, Durić received his doctorate in theology from the Orthodox Theological Faculty in Belgrade. In January 2017, he was appointed a member of the Senate of Republika Srpska for a seven-year term. He wrote the book Across the Threshold, for which he received the Kočić Pen Award in December 2017, as well as the Kočić Book Award.[5]
Views
Durić is an ecumenist.[6] He is a strong critic of Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić, provoking hostility from the Serbian Orthodox Church and the media close to the government.[7] In July 2020, he criticized the Serbian government for providing funds for the Temple of Saint Sava instead of funding hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Serbian Orthodox Church responded by accusing him of anti-clericalism and anti-Serbdom.[8] In the midst of the anti-government protests in Serbia after the proposed reintroduction of the COVID-19 curfew, the deputy mayor of Belgrade, Goran Vesić, called him an inspirator of the protest, and he filed criminal charges against Grigorije for "incitement to murder".[9]
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