The incredible story of the beggar who donated thousands of dollars to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church

The Church has not yet canonized him, but “the grandfather” Good good He is already considered a saint in Bulgaria, even more so after donating all the alms he collected throughout his two decades as a beggar. Thus, he became the biggest contributor to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

Dressed in a black coat and still with his long white beard, Dobri traveled every day the twenty kilometers that separated his modest house in the town of Baylovo from the great cathedral of Sofia. During the trip, he asked for money, which he then gave.

Several monasteries and churches across the country have confirmed that they have received amounts ranging from $ 3,000 to $ 12,000 each from this famous beggar. It is presumed that during his lifetime he gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, according to an estimate by Balkan Insight.

“He gave us $ 31,000 in 2009, while leading a comfortable private life,” said the bishop. Tikhon, president of the board of directors of the cathedral, at the agency AFP. “Dobri is an extremely rare phenomenon,” he added.

Dobri’s track record makes his story even more compelling, perhaps also because he’s never granted a press interview. Born in 1914, he lost his hearing in one of the bombings in the Bulgarian capital during World War II.

“It made him pious in his own way,” he says. Elena Genoa, a distant relative who lives in the town of Baylovo, 40 kilometers east of the capital Sofia, as quoted by the Strait Times newspaper.

“He left his wife and four children, including a newborn baby, to take on different jobs in the monasteries,” said the woman, who called him “grandfather” Dobri and who often helped him count. money he had collected. “For the past 20 years, he has devoted himself entirely to collecting alms.”

The old man lived in a small, bare room, with a bed and a table, next to the church in Baylovo, which was renovated with the money he gave them. At the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia, he brought in around 20 thousand euros in donations.

Eventually people started to call him “The Saint of Baylovo” and parents would bring their youngest children to them to bless them.

Dobri died on February 13, 2018 at Saint George Kremikovtsi Monastery. He lived in absolute poverty, preaching asceticism by example. He was 103 years old. He was never canonized, but for Bulgarians he was always a true saint.

THE NATION