Bulgarian Catholics and foreigners, living or holidaying there, attended the Easter mass that was served at the Saint Mihail church in the coastal town of Varna on Sunday as Catholic Christians are remembering the resurrection of Jesus Christ.In the capital Sofia, thousands of pilgrims poured into the Bulgaria's biggest Catholic cathedral Saint Joseph to attend the Easter mass on March 23.
Celebrations were also held in the town of Russe on the Danube river.
The Roman Catholic community in Bulgaria accounts for less than 1 percent of the population but the tiny country takes pride in serving as a model for cooperation between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.
Rakovski, part of a small Roman Catholic pocket in central Bulgaria, has the biggest Catholic community in the country.
The visit of the late Pope John Paul II to Bulgaria in May, 2002 - part of his historic journeys to Orthodox Christian lands - is considered to be a huge step in healing 10 centuries of estrangement between Roman Catholics and Orthodox.
The subject of Catholics gained popularity in Bulgaria after the collapse of communist on November 10, 1989, in connection with the fresh disclosures of the crackdown on them under the regime.
According to Svetlozar Eldurov's book "Catholics in Bulgaria: 1878-1989", the first ever comprehensive study of that period in the history of the Catholic community in Bulgaria, most of the literature since the start of the 20th century has viewed Catholics as alien and damaging to Bulgarian national unity.
Along with the other religious denominations, Catholicism has long been just a subject of study for the purposes of scientific atheism.
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