site.btaNovember 11, 1952: Communist Authorities Execute Bishop Evgeni Bosilkov and Three Other Catholic Clergymen after Espionage Trial

On November 11, 1952, a firing squad executed the Catholic Bishop Evgeni Bosilkov and three other clergymen after a court found them guilty of spying. 

Bosilkov was born to a family of Bulgarian Latin Rite Catholics on November 16, 1900, in Belene, Bulgaria. 

He studied in Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy where he obtained his doctorate at the Pontifical Oriental Institute. He became a parish priest in the Danube Valley and made a name for himself as a Roman Catholic leader in the 1940s. In July 1952 he was arrested by the Communist regime, together with many other religious leaders. He was sentenced to death in a frame-up trial against 32 people arranged by the State Security. On November 11 the same year the execution was carried out by a firing squad.

The Holy See considered Bishop Bosilkov missing until Todor Zhivkov admitted, during a visit to the Vatican in 1975, that he had been executed.

Bishop Bosilkov was proclaimed a servant of God - the first step towards canonization - in Urbania (Italy) on October 27, 1985. On March 15, 1998, Pope John Paul II declared  Bossilkov "Blessed".