Kamen Vitchev

Who was Kamen Vitchev?

Born May 23, 1893 at Srem, Bulgaria, Peter Vitchev came from a peasant Orthodox family. He joined the Catholic congregation known as the Assumptionists, or Augustinians of the Assumption, in 1910, beginning his novitiate in Gempe, Belgium, and later taking the name Kamen. He pursued his studies of philosophy and theology in Louvain, Belgium. He was ordained a priest in Constantinople on December 22, 1921. After a brief period teaching at St. Augustine College in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, and at a high school seminary in Kumkapı, Turkey, he returned to Strasbourg and Rome, to complete his studies and obtained a doctorate in theology in 1929.

Very knowledgeable in the history of the Bulgarian church, he published several articles in the review known as Echos d'Orient. In 1930 he was appointed professor of philosophy and Dean of Studies at St. Augustine College in Plovdiv and maintained this position until the school was closed by the Communist regime on August 2, 1948.

After this prestigious institution founded and maintained by the Assumptionists was closed, Fr. Vitchev became superior of the Assumptionist seminary in Plovdiv which housed a small number of students. That same year all foreign members of religious orders were expelled and Fr. Vitchev was named Vicar-Provincial of the remaining Bulgarian Assumptionists. They numbered twenty and staffed five Oriental and four Latin rite parishes.