Bulgaria Comments - En

ACTS OF THE 7th EUROPEAN ASSEMBLY OF LAY DOMINICAN FRATERNITIES

ANNEX IIi

COMPLEMENT TO THE POWERPOINT PRESENTATION ON BULGARIA

I. Short history Bulgaria is a traditionally Orthodox country and Catholics constitute about 1% of the population. This makes for a specific context in both religious and cultural aspects. Since there were no Dominicans of any kind in Bulgaria before, the rise of our fraternity seemed to be a remarkable gift of the Providence. The first member entered the Order in 1987 thanks to a Bulgarian lay Dominican woman which had long been living in Poland – Maria Kominek. Another three among her Bulgarian friends entered over the next years. They started gathering every week, organizing spiritual retreats with Polish friars, and engaged themselves in various church activities. All of them made their promises as private members since there was no fraternity founded yet. About the end of the 1990’s, there was the needed number of 7 finally professed persons to establish a fraternity according to the Polish directory of the time. In 2003 three of them met with Fr. Gerald Stookey in Santa Sabina and after that he promoted the constitution of the fraternity. It was officially approved by the Master of the Order Fr. Carlos Azpiroz Costa on 25 November 2005, the feast day of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Patroness of the Order, well-honoured in the East. The fraternity was assigned to be a part of the Hungarian Vicariate. It has now got ten finally professed members, one temporarily professed and one in postulate. II. Life in the fraternity 1. Regular meetings The members of the fraternity meet regularly once a week, always on Wednesdays. The weekly meetings have the following order: - participating in the Holy Mass; - praying vespers and common prayers; - listening to and discussing formative reading matter. The topics of the reading matter for the past few years have been: History of the Order and Lives of the Dominican saints; Fundamentals of Dominican spirituality; Specific elements of the vocation and life in the Third Order; Principles of devotional life; Documents of the Teaching authority of the Church, etc. We usually receive the formative materials from Poland.

Annually, a number of meetings are dedicated to the Rule of the Order and to the Directory of Lay Dominicans. The weekly meetings are open to all those who are interested. Once a month, on the first Saturday of the month, there is a day devoted to meditation. The day begins with participation in the Holy Mass and praying of Matins, followed by a meditation on Gospel readings and readings from Dominican saints (for example, the Dialogues of St. Catherine of Siena), adoration of the Holy Eucharist, prayer and confession. Shortly after the beginning of our regular meetings, we included in our common prayer a prayer which we composed for our community: Lord, You who have called and gathered us, we thank You for all Your graces – known and unknown, manifest and hidden – which You have conferred upon us. We also thank You for these common prayers, in which You are present with us. Do so, Lord, that none among us falls away, but that all, together, with humility and charity, may always do Your will. We ask this through Our Lord, Jesus Christ. 2. Retreats At least once a year there is a retreat. As a binding rule, one of the retreats is open only to the members of the fraternity. These retreats precede the solemnity of entering as a postulant and novice, and of taking vows, a solemnity which usually takes place on the Feast Day of St. Dominic, the 8th of August. The retreat is usually placed under the guidance of priests from the Polish province. In the last ten years, the closed retreats have been conducted by Fr. Marek Grzelczak OP, who is now our religious assistant. III. Private occupations The sisters and brothers of the fraternity make an effort for personal growth in their faith and life based on virtue, by endeavouring, to the best of their abilities, to participate in the Holy Mass daily, to often receive the sacrament of Reconciliation, to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, the Rosary (in the fraternity there are two live Rosaries) and the Dominican prayers as well as to acquire theological knowledge and deepen it through reading. IV. Activities Most members are concerned with intellectual work in their secular lives (university professors, translators), which reflects on the kind of activities of the fraternity. As the sole representative of the Dominican Order in the Bulgarian Catholic Church, our fraternity bears witness above all to the specific Dominican spirituality. With our

activity we contribute to the popularizing of the Aristotelian-Thomistic way of thinking, which is virtually unknown among Bulgarian intellectuals. The members of the fraternity take an active part in the life of their parishes, for example they participate in organizing the presence of the youth during the World Youth Days with the Holy Father, they participate in charity work, they prepare discussions for the faithful and the academic community at the request of the priests, they organize meetings, lectures and open retreats by visiting priests (Dominicans and Jesuits), they take part in television broadcasts on Christian topics. Some of the members constitute the main body of the Catholic Cultural Centre, founded in 1996 and attached to the Apostolic Exarchate in Sofia, where they are concerned with organizing charity concerts, with translation and publishing of religious literature, with organizing lectures for citizens (often with the help and participation of lecturers from “Climent Ohridski” University in Sofia). We take an active part in the various publishing activities of the Church. We established and took part in the editing of the Christian series “Vita Christiana” in cooperation with a secular publishing house which led to publishing a recent Dominican author in Bulgaria. In the years 1994-95 we participated in the founding and editing of the issues of the journal “Dokosvane”, published by Capuchin friars in Sofia and oriented towards students and intellectuals. Due to financial reasons the publishing of the journal came to an end. At the request of or in cooperation with our pastors, our members participate in the work of the World Bible Community on the new ecumenical translation of the Holy Scripture, take part in international conferences dedicated to the catholic press (Warsaw 1997), to the problems of Catholic cultural centres (Alba Julia 2001), to Catholic culture (Krakow 1991; Prague 1993; St. Petersburg 1995) and to university (Rome 2002, 2004 and 2007). Our representative took part in the International Lay Dominican Congress last year. The Bulgarian Lay Dominicans also took part in organizing the visit of the Holy Father in Bulgaria in May 2002 by preparing materials for the press centre and commentaries for one of the television channels.