Kamen Vitchev

Blessed Kamen Vitchev
Blessed Kamen Vitchev
	John Paul II
Feast	11 November
Attributes	Assumptionist habit, book of hours, cross

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, at Srem, near

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.

Bulgarian communist regime

Very knowledgeable in the history of the Bulgarian church, Vitchev published several articles in the review known as Échos d'Orient. In 1930 he was appointed professor of philosophy and dean of studies at St. Augustine College in Plovdiv and maintained this position until the school was closed by the Communist regime on August 2, 1948.

After this prestigious institution founded and maintained by the Assumptionists was closed, Vitchev became superior of the Assumptionist seminary in Plovdiv which housed a small number of students. That same year all foreign members of religious orders were expelled and Vitchev was named Vicar-Provincial of the remaining Bulgarian Assumptionists. They numbered 20 and staffed 5 Eastern Catholic and 4 Latin Church parishes.^{[citation needed]}

As a

Cardinal József Mindszenty in Hungary in 1948, of Archbishop Josef Beran in Czechoslovakia in 1950, and of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński in Poland

in 1953).

Death

Highly esteemed and respected by the influential young graduates of St. Augustine College, Vitchev posed a threat to the Communist authorities in Bulgaria and was arrested on July 4, 1952. After what international organizations universally considered a show trial which began on September 29, 1952, and ended with a guilty verdict and a death sentence on October 3, Vitchev, two of his Assumptionists companions,

Passionist bishop, Eugene Bossilkov

, were shot to death, without public notice, at approximately 11:30 PM the evening of November 11, 1952.