GORAZD. – Disciple of St. Methodius, born in 830, died at Berat (Albania). Ordained priest in Rome in 868, he went to Moravia, where he collaborated with St. Methodius in introducing the Slav liturgy. St. Methodius designated him as his successor. As he was not acceptable either to Bishop Wiching of Nitra in Slovakia or to Svatopluk, in 886 he took refuge with the Bulgarian prince Michael and embraced the Greek schism, becoming the second archbishop of the Bulgarians. From that time he was venerated as a saint by them. His feast is celebrated on 17 July. Through his efforts Bulgaria became the centre of the Slav liturgy and of Glagolitic writing.
GORAZD. – A Czech schismatic bishop, born in 1879. Originally a Catholic priest named Matthias Pavlik, he adhered to the turbulent religious movement that arose in Czechoslovakia after the war of 1914–18, which led to the proclamation of the Czechoslovak National Church in Prague on 8 January 1920 by certain apostate priests. Elected as the first bishop of this Church, he was consecrated by the Serbian “Orthodox” patriarch Demetrius on 25 September 1921. On this occasion Pavlik assumed the name of G., which had been that of the first successor of St. Methodius. Later he came into conflict with the other leaders of the movement because of the unbridled subjectivism and liberalism in matters of faith that prevailed in the Czechoslovak Church. For this reason, on 5 March 1923 he resigned from the office of bishop of the Czechoslovak Church and joined the small Czech “Orthodox” community in Prague, of which— not without intrigue—he assumed leadership on 22 November 1925. In 1929 the definitive Statute of the Czech “Orthodox” Church was approved by the Serbian “Orthodox” Church and by the Czechoslovak Government (in 1940 it numbered no more than 7,350 faithful), and G. was elected as its bishop.
G. together with some of his collaborators was shot by the Germans on 4 September 1942, because he had granted asylum to the parachutists who carried out the assassination attempt against Heydrich, the German Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia.