Two years later, Platon was appointed Bishop of Ohrid and Bitola, but was dismissed from his post after criticizing his predecessor and accusing him of fomenting discord within the eparchy.

On 24 April, the Ustaše commissioner of Banja Luka, Viktor Gutić, issued a decree ordering all citizens who had been born in Serbia or Montenegro to leave the city within five days.

The following night, he and another cleric were taken from their cell and driven to the outskirts of Banja Luka, where they were tortured and killed, and their mutilated bodies pushed into the Vrbas.

Upon his return from Russia, Platon was raised to the rank of syncellus and assigned to the Rajinovac Monastery in the Belgrade suburb of Grocka.

[2] Following the outbreak of the Balkan Wars in November 1912, Platon was summoned to serve as a military chaplain in the Morava Brigade of the Royal Serbian Army.

He spent the entirety of the war in Serbia, refusing to evacuate to the Greek island of Corfu along with the Royal Serbian Army after the country was defeated and occupied by the Central Powers.

In 1919, due to the lobbying of his political opponents within the Bishops' Council of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Platon was forcibly retired, forcing him to find work as an apprentice in a carpentry shop.

In November 1932, Platon was appointed manager of the monastery printing press at Sremski Karlovci and once again entrusted with editing the Gazette of the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate.

It soon emerged that Platon was its author, causing a rift between him and the Royal Yugoslav Government, headed by Prime Minister Milan Stojadinović.

[7] On 19 July 1937, the adoption of the concordat was put before a vote in the National Assembly, prompting street demonstrations led by high-ranking Serbian Orthodox clerics, which were violently suppressed by gendarmes wielding truncheons.

Nevertheless, Stojadinović announced he would postpone the implementation of the concordat in order to mend ties with the Serbian Orthodox Church.

On 19 December 1939, during a service to mark the feast of Saint Nicholas, Platon delivered a sermon in which he denounced his predecessor, and chastised him for inciting division and discontent within the diocese.

[5] Although the Ministry of Religious Affairs wished to see him forcibly retired, the Bishops' Council decided to transfer Platon to the Eparchy of Banja Luka.

[11] Following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Bosnia and Herzegovina became part of the Independent State of Croatia (Croatian: Nezavisna država Hrvatska; NDH), a puppet state governed by the fascist, Croatian nationalist Ustaše movement, under the leadership of Ante Pavelić.

[12] Shortly after the establishment of the NDH, Viktor Gutić was named the Ustaše commissioner (Croatian: Stožernik) for the city of Banja Luka.

All Serbs, Jews and "enemies of the state" working in the public sector had their employment terminated and their jobs were allocated to Croats and Bosnian Muslims who were deemed loyal.

On 24 April, Gutić issued a decree ordering that all individuals born in "the former Serbia and Montenegro", or had roots therein, leave Banja Luka within five days.

[14] Platon decided to arrange a meeting with Gutić in an effort to ameliorate the anti-Serb measures that he had decreed, and if possible, convince him to postpone his deadline for the deportation of certain Serbs.

During the meeting, Gutić described the anti-Serb measures that the Ustaše were implementing as "God's punishment for you Serbs", but agreed to postpone the deportations by ten days.

[19] Together with two other Ustaše, Mirko Kovačević and Nino Čondrić, Đelić forced the two clerics into the back of a car and drove them out of the city.

[18] Through an intermediary, Mačkić managed to persuade a group of Bosnian Muslim and Croat civilians to bury Platon's body.

"Between 214 and 217 were murdered outright," Velikonja writes, "334 were exiled to German-occupied Serbia, eighteen fled of their own accord, three were arrested, and five died of natural causes.

[25] In October 1944, Đelić was hanged on the orders of the Croatian Home Guard general Vladimir Metikoš, citing insubordination.

[29] A post-war investigation conducted by the Yugoslav State Commission established that Platon's killing had been ordered by Gutić.

[31] On 1 July 1973, Platon's remains were exhumed and reinterred in the crypt of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Banja Luka, which had been dynamited by the Ustaše during the war and had only recently been rebuilt.

[32] Platon was canonized by the Serbian Orthodox Church on 21 May 2000, in a ceremony held in Belgrade's Cathedral of Saint Sava, together with several other clergymen who had perished at the hands of the Ustaše.

[23] The historian Vjekoslav Perica argues that Platon's canonization and that of the other clergymen was undertaken in response to Pope John Paul II's controversial beatification of the wartime Archbishop of Zagreb Aloysius Stepinac in October 1998.