site.btaMemorial Service for King Boris III’s 80th Death Anniversary

A holy hierarch's liturgy, followed by a memorial service, will take place at the Nativity of the Virgin Cathedral of Rila Monastery (Southwestern Bulgaria) on Monday morning in connection with the 80th anniversary of the death of Bulgarian King Boris III (1894-1943), the Secretariat of the King's son, Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, said in a press release.

The rites will be performed with the blessing of Bulgarian Patriarch Neophyte and the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

As Bronislaw Chrobok, the husband of Boris's daughter Maria Louisa, is celebrating his 90th birthday on August 27, members of the Chrobok family will be unable to attend the occasion in Bulgaria, the Secretariat said.

"On August 28, 1943 King Boris III died under circumstances which remain controversial to this day. Following a large and impressive State Funeral at the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia, where the streets were lined with weeping crowds, the coffin of King Boris III was taken by train to the mountains and buried in Bulgaria’s largest and most important monastery, the Rila Monastery. After taking power in September 1944, the Communist-dominated government had his body exhumed and secretly buried in the courtyard of the Vrana Palace near Sofia. At a later time the Communist authorities removed the zinc coffin from Vrana and moved it to a secret location, which remains unknown to this day. After the fall of communism, an excavation attempt was made at the Vrana Palace, in which only Boris's heart was found, as it had been put in a glass cylinder outside the coffin. The heart was taken by his widow in 1993 to Rila Monastery where it was reinterred," https://www.kingsimeon.bg explains.