Kamen Vitchev

Peter Vitchev, also known as Kamen Vitchev, was a Bulgarian Eastern Catholic and an Assumptionist priest who was martyred by the Bulgarian communist regime. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 2002.

Biography

Early life and priesthood Vitchev was born on May 23, 1893, near Topolovgrad, Bulgaria and came from a peasant Eastern Orthodox family. In 1903 he was accepted into the grammar school of Kara-Agatch in Adrianopoli. In 1910, he joined the Congregation of the Augustinians of the Assumption, beginning his novitiate in Gempe, Belgium, and taking the religious name Kamen. He made his final profession in 1912 in Limperzberg.

He then commenced his studies of philosophy and theology in Louvain, Belgium, where he remained until 1918. He was ordained a priest of the Eastern Rite in Constantinople on 22 December 1921. After a brief period teaching at St. Augustine College in Plovdiv, Bulgaria and at a high school seminary in Kumkapı, Turkey, he returned to Strasbourg and Rome, to complete his studies and obtained a doctorate in theology in 1929. During his homily, Pope also honored the memory of those of the Orthodox Church who suffered martyrdom under the same Communist regime.

On July 28, 2010, the Bulgarian parliament passed a law officially rehabilitating all of those who had been condemned by the People's Republic of Bulgaria in 1952, including Vitchev.