Origins and monastic formation
He was born in 1791 at Baošići in the Bay of Kotor into a priestly family — his father was Jovan, his mother Anđa — and the accounts of his life note clergy across several generations of the household, including his grandfather, the priest Simeon, and his uncles Marko and Nikola. His schooling began in 1798 under a local priest at Baošići, and he continued his studies with a cousin, Fr. Aleksa.
His father is said to have opposed a monastic vocation on account of the boy's frail health, but he was received into the brotherhood of Savina Monastery on 25 May 1805, at about fourteen years of age. He was tonsured a monk on 20 November 1808 and given the name Kiril, taken from Saint Constantine the Philosopher.
Ordination followed in stages across the Dalmatian churches: deacon on 24 July 1812 at Vrlika, archdeacon on 14 June 1814 at Šibenik, and priest on 21 November 1815 in the cathedral at Šibenik. In July 1817 he was made protosyncellus.
The contest over Union in Dalmatia
As protosyncellus he served as personal secretary to Venedikt (Kraljević), Bishop of Dalmatia, at Šibenik. The period was marked by pressure on the Orthodox Serbs of the province, then under Austrian rule, to accept union with Rome; the diocesan accounts of his life describe him as the chief defender of Orthodoxy against that effort, and he stood with the Serbs of Šibenik in refusing it.
The Šibenik uprising of 1821 brought the matter to a head. He was arrested in its aftermath and charged with organising the resistance.
Prison and Gradiška
He was held four years and three months in investigative detention in the fortress at Šibenik, and was then sentenced to twenty years of hard labour, which he served principally at the fortress of Gradiška. Taken together with his detention, his confinement ran to more than fifteen years.
In 1842 he was removed from prison to Bezdin Monastery in the Banat, where the remainder of the sentence was to be served under the monastery's charge. His release came on 12 February 1846, but he was forbidden to return either to Dalmatia or to Boka Kotorska.
Bezdin
Barred from his homeland, he remained at Bezdin as a monk for the rest of his life. The monastery's records remember him for exemplary conduct, and in 1852 he was awarded the right to wear the red belt in recognition of his service.
He reposed at Bezdin in 1857; the sources give the date as 28 September, with 29 September recorded in some accounts. He was buried in the monastery courtyard, on the north side, without a marker over the grave.
Relics & Shrines
His unmarked grave in the Bezdin courtyard was opened in July 2011 — the exhumation is dated 25–27 July — and his remains were placed in a reliquary and enshrined in the monastery church, where they are venerated.
Glorification
The Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church, meeting 13–17 May 2025 at the Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade, approved his canonization. The Assembly's communique names him a confessor of the faith and protosyncellus, and styles him confessor of Bezdin and of Dalmatia and Boka. His feast was appointed for 29 September on the Church calendar, corresponding to 12 October on the civil calendar.
He was one of nine persons and groups glorified at that session. The others were Nikodim (Milaš), Bishop of Dalmatia; the priest Mihailo Barbić, parish priest of Krtole; the priest Ilija Rodić; the venerable-martyr Jovan of Stjenik; Ana, mother of Saint Vasilije of Ostrog, named as holy and blessed; the martyrs of Reškovice, killed in 1688; the venerable-martyrs of Rmanj; and the martyrs of Garavice and Bihać-Petrovac. The same Assembly adjusted the feast date of the child martyrs of Jastrebarsko and Sisak.
