Sofia Pavkova

The nun Sofia Pavkova († 1876) was one of the nuns of the Holy Trinity convent at Novo Selo (today Apriltsi), killed by the Turks on 9 May 1876 in the monastery church. She was canonized as a holy martyr by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church on 3 April 2011; she is commemorated on 26 April (9 May by the new calendar), together with the other martyrs of Novo Selo.

The girls' monastery of the Holy Trinity had been built about 1830, and girls of devout families of Novo Selo and the neighbouring villages gave their lives to it there; the nuns lived in angelic virginity, in prayer and work, praying for their own salvation and that of their neighbours and that the Fatherland might again be an independent Christian state. At the uprising of May 1876 the thirty nuns helped the soldiers with food and clothing. On 9 May the bashi-⁠bazouks burst into Novo Selo; the nuns took refuge in the church, where they were killed before the altar and within it, together with the abbess Susana. Their relics are today in the monastery church.