A Place to Worship

Peasant-born Stayka Petrovich worked as a domestic in Belgrade until 1950, when she was sent to New York as a servant for Yugoslav officials. A devout woman, Stayka always went to church in Belgrade despite official disapproval. In New York, she was specifically forbidden to attend church or befriend Serb-speaking Americans. After 18 wretched months she found Manhattan's Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sava, began to attend services regularly despite her orders. "I am so happy," she told the dean, Father Doushan Shoukletovich, "that I have found my church, for which I have been longing." Soon, her church-going discovered, she was sent to the Yugoslav consulate to pick up her traveling papers.

Convinced that trouble awaited her in Yugoslavia, she went to the cathedral instead. With the priest's help, she found work and refuge in a New Jersey sanitarium run by anti-Communist refugees. As an alien, however, she was technically subject to deportation. Last year the summons to Ellis Island came. Father Doushan appealed to New Jersey's Senator Robert Hendrickson, who introduced a relief bill in the U.S. Senate. Before leaving for Colorado last week, President Eisenhower signed a bill to grant 48-year-old Stayka Petrovich asylum in the U.S. —and the right to worship in peace for the rest of her life.