Blessed Pavel Djidjov

Pavel Djidjov (19 July 1919 – 3 October 1952) was a Bulgarian theologian who was executed after a show trial and beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2002. He is commemorated on November 11. Pavel Djidjov was born to a Latin rite Catholic family in Plovdiv. He was baptized on 2 August 1919 and given the name Joseph. He took the name Pavel (Paul) when he entered the Assumptionist novitiate in Nozeroy, France, in October 1938. To achieve his childhood ambition of attaining priesthood, he entered the Assumptionist-sponsored St. Augustine College in Plovdiv, where he was considered a good student, especially in mathematics. After his novitiate, he went on to study theology in Lormoy, France, near Paris, during World War II. For health reasons he returned to Bulgaria in 1942 to complete his theological studies and was ordained on 26 January 1945. He later continued his studies in economics and social sciences. His first assignment was as a teacher at the Assumptionist high school in Varna, where he was closely watched by the secret police. Not long thereafter he was named to be the treasurer at St. Augustine College in Plovdiv and served there until the institution was closed by the Communists in 1948. He was particularly appreciated by students and others for his piety, sense of humor, deep faith, ecumenical spirit, and bravery before the Communist regime. Often he risked personal safety by defending the rights of the Church in public and visiting political prisoners. As a Soviet satellite, Bulgaria suffered from the wave of anti-Church legislation that swept the bloc in the years after World War II (e.g. the arrest of Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac in Yugoslavia in 1946, of Cardinal József Mindszenty in Hungary in 1948, of Archbishop Josef Beran in Czechoslovakia in 1950, and of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński in Poland in 1953). Already as a student in 1945, Djidjov had engaged in polemics with Communist students and professors and was placed on a blacklist.