On March 13, 2024, after a long treatment at the Military Medical Academy in Sofia, the Patriarch of Bulgaria and Metropolitan of Sofia, Mr. Neophyte.

Patriarch Neofit (baptized name Simeon Nikolov Dimitrov) was born on October 15, 1945 in Sofia. After completing elementary school in 1959, he entered the Sofia Theological Seminary in the Čerepišu Monastery, which he graduated in 1965. He graduated in 1971 from the Sofia Theological Academy, and later spent some time at the Moscow Spiritual Academy. In the Troyan Monastery, he was ordained a monk on August 3, 1975, receiving the name Neophyte, in the presence of the then Bulgarian Patriarch Maxim. The following year, he was ordained as a hierodeacon and hieromonk in the Church of Saint Nedelja in Sofia. From 1975, he conducted the church choir in Sofia, and in 1977 he worked as a teacher of church singing at the Theological Academy. It was produced for the Archimandrite in 1977 in the Church of Saint Nedelja. In 1989, he was elected rector of the Theological Academy in Sofia, and in 1991, he was elected the first dean of the renewed Faculty of Theology at the University of Sofia, when that faculty, which was founded in 1923, was returned to the state university. Later he was the chief secretary of the Holy Synod. Elected archbishop in 1994 and appointed Metropolitan of Dorostol and Červen. When the Church-People's Assembly decided to divide that diocese in 2001, he became the Metropolitan of Ruse. At the session of the Holy Synod of Bishops on February 24, 2013, he was elected Patriarch of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

Eternal memory!

Source: SPC