John the Bulgarian

Blessed John the Bulgarian was a Bulgarian new martyr, born around 1763 in the Ottoman Empire, who renounced Christ in his youth, repented on the Holy Mountain and received the death of a martyr at Constantinople on 5 March 1784. He is commemorated on 5 March.

He was Bulgarian by birth and educated. At eighteen he renounced Christianity and embraced Islam. Later he repented and went to Athos, where for three years he served an elder in the Great Lavra.

In 1784 he went to Constantinople and, on 5 March, in the church of Hagia Sophia, turned into a mosque, he began to cross himself and pray as a Christian. Asked why he did so, he answered that Christ is the Son of God and God. The Ottomans at once cut off his head, outside, in the courtyard of the building.