Anton Vovk

Who was Anton Vovk?

The Archbishop Anton Vovk was born in the village of Vrba in Upper Carniola in the same house where the poet France Prešeren had been born 100 years earlier. Vovk’s father Jožef Vovk and mother Marija née Debelak died when he was young. He attended two years of primary school in Breznica and then in Kranj, where he also attended upper secondary school. In 1917 he enrolled in the seminary at the episcopal school in Šentvid, Ljubljana and later in the Ljubljana seminary. He was ordained a priest on 29 June 1923. He served in Metlika and Tržič, where he also became the parish priest in 1928. In 1940 he was appointed an episcopal advisor and Ljubljana canon. During the Axis occupation of Slovenia in the Second World War he assisted refugee priests. In 1944 he became the rector of the seminary.

As general vicar, in June 1945 he assumed the leadership of the Diocese of Ljubljana after Gregorij Rožman fled Yugoslavia. He was installed as bishop on 1 December 1946 and named auxiliary bishop of Ljubljana. In 1950 he was named apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Ljubljana with the rights of bishop in residence. From 1951 to 1961 he also administered the Slovene part of Rijeka and from 1951 to 1955 the Slovene part of the Diocese of Trieste-Koper. After the death of Gregorij Rožman in Cleveland in 1959, Vovk was ordained bishop of Ljubljana. Pope John XXIII raised the Diocese of Ljubljana to an archbishopric on 22 December 1961, simultaneously elevating Vovk to the position of archbishop of Ljubljana.