[2] In 1690, he and the Tvrdoš brotherhood (including his brother Savatije) left Trebinje for Herceg Novi, fleeing the Ottomans, where they renovated the Savina Monastery.
Stevan and Savatije became friends with colonel Mihailo Miloradović,[2] who had along with Metropolitan Danilo I Petrović-Njegoš been recruited by Peter I of Russia to incite rebellion in Herzegovina against the Ottomans in 1710–11 (during the Pruth River Campaign).
[3] On 2 September 1719 Cardinal Fabrizio Paolucci asked Rome that the Nuncio in Venice bar Bishop Stevan Ljubibratić from visiting the Serbian Orthodox population on Venetian territory.
Following his banishment from Dalmatia, Bishop Stevan went to the Serbian Orthodox Ličko-Krbavska and Zrinopoljska Eparchy which was established in 1695 by metropolitan Atanasije Ljubojević and certified by Emperor Joseph I in 1707.
This eparchy was the ecclesiastical centre of the Serbian Orthodox Church in this region, populated by Serbs, the community known at the time as "Rascians".