Marin Srakić

Marin Srakić was born on 6 July 1937 in Ivanovci, near Valpovo, in what is now Osijek-Baranja County in eastern Croatia. His parents were Marko and Katja Srakić, née Orešković, a Croatian Catholic family.

He attended the boys' seminary and the Archdiocesan Classical Gymnasium at Šalata in Zagreb and took his final school examinations at the lyceum of the Theological College in Đakovo. He began theology in Đakovo and continued at the Catholic Faculty of Theology of the University of Zagreb, where he graduated and later earned a licentiate in theology. He was ordained a priest on 6 March 1960. In 1975 he received a doctorate in moral theology from the Alphonsian Academy of the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome, with a dissertation on the history and theology of the question of war and peace.

After ordination Srakić served as an assistant priest in Slavonski Brod from 1960 to 1961 and as parish administrator in Podravski Podgajci from 1961 to 1965. He then worked as an educator at the theological seminary in Đakovo from 1965 to 1967 and again from 1970 to 1973, and was rector of the seminary from 1977 to 1989. From 1966 to 1967 and from 1970 to 1999 he taught moral theology at the Theological College in Đakovo, later a branch of the Catholic Faculty of Theology of the University of Zagreb.

On 2 February 1990 Pope John Paul II appointed him auxiliary bishop of Đakovo or Bosnia and Srijem and titular bishop of Cercina. He was consecrated on 24 March 1990 in the Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul in Đakovo by Cardinal Franjo Kuharić, and served as vicar general and provost of the cathedral chapter. He was named coadjutor bishop on 10 February 1996 and became diocesan bishop on 6 February 1997, succeeding Ćiril Kos. Pope John Paul II visited Đakovo and Osijek during his episcopate, in 2003.

When the diocese was raised to the Archdiocese of Đakovo-Osijek in 2008, Srakić became its first archbishop and metropolitan. Within the Croatian Bishops' Conference he chaired its permanent council, its legal commission and its council for seminaries and vocations, and he was elected president of the conference in Gospić on 18 October 2007, serving until November 2012. Pope Francis accepted his resignation on reaching the canonical retirement age on 18 April 2013, and he was succeeded by Đuro Hranić.

As a Catholic priest and bishop, Srakić did not marry. His episcopal motto was Spe et labore, by hope and work. He founded an archdiocesan foundation named after Dr. Nikola Dogan to support pupils and students, and after retirement he lived in Đakovo as archbishop emeritus.

Marin Srakić died on Monday, 2 November 2026, in Đakovo, in his 90th year, the 67th year of his priesthood and the 37th of his episcopal ministry. Some early reports gave the date as 3 November, the day the great bells of Đakovo Cathedral announced his death at 10.25 in the morning, but the archdiocese's official notice gives 2 November. The cause of death was not made public.

A requiem Mass was announced for Thursday, 5 November 2026, at 2 pm in the Cathedral of St Peter in Đakovo, led by Archbishop Dražen Kutleša of Zagreb, with a homily by his successor Archbishop Đuro Hranić, who was also to lead the burial in the cathedral crypt. Instead of flowers and wreaths, the archdiocese asked for donations to the Dr. Nikola Dogan foundation, through the archdiocesan Caritas. His death was also noted by L'Osservatore Romano.

Srakić is remembered as the first archbishop and metropolitan of Đakovo-Osijek, a pastor who served the church in eastern Croatia from the 1990s onwards and led his diocese during the papal visit of 2003. Generations of priests passed through the seminary and the moral theology classes he led in Đakovo over three decades, and the student foundation he established continues his concern for education.