Susana Somleva

The venerable martyr Susana Somleva († 1876) was abbess of the convent of the Holy Trinity 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.

She was the daughter of the village mayor, the fighter for faith and nation Tsonko Somlev. As abbess she led the convent worthily, seeing to it that the sisters lived by the rule drawn up for them on Mount Athos by Hieromonk Spyridon. In the days of the uprising of May 1876, when the republic of Novo Selo was proclaimed, the thirty nuns of the convent, besides prayer, cooked and baked bread for the soldiers, gathered clothing, knitted stockings and flannels for the young men badly shod and badly clothed, and repeated the words of the Psalmist: "My heart is ready, O God." On 9 May 1876 the bashi-⁠bazouks and Circassians burst into the village, and the nuns took refuge in the monastery church. The Turks fired through the windows, entered and began to cut down all. Before the altar and within it the abbess Susana, six more nuns and one laywoman met their death. Four of the sisters who escaped with their lives, after unspeakable sufferings, told later of the end of those martyred. Their relics are today in the monastery church.