Joseph Sokolsky

Joseph Sokolsky (Йосиф Соколски, Gabrovo, 1786 – died in Kiev, now Ukraine September 30, 1879) was the first senior Eastern Orthodox Bulgarian clergyman who convert to Catholicism, thus becoming a pioneer of the Bulgarian Byzantine Catholic Church. Sokolsky negotiated with Vatican a formal union due to Phanariotes domination over Bulgarian Orthodoxy and gained Catholic recognition 1861 when Pope Pius IX named him Archbishop for the Bulgarians of the Byzantine Rite. He was also accepted in that capacity by the Ottoman Empire.

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