On the eve of one of the great Christian holidays, the Resurrection of Christ, the residents of the largest Plovdiv village, Parvenec, united around the cause of saving the church, which has become a symbol of the settlement.

For more than 10 years, the temple has been locked, as there is a risk of collapsing at any moment.

"All of us are very sorry that we cannot enter the church for so long now.

We can't light a candle, we can't come to the holidays," shared Petrana Vodenicharova on Nova TV. 

The old church "Saints Saints Constantine and Elena" in the Plovdiv village of Parvenets has not welcomed the laity for 10 years.

The wooden columns are rotten and the church dome is unstable and could collapse at any moment.

Only the priest and the priest dare to go inside

"These things rotted and began to fall.

And here these columns are hollow.

Look at the bottom with slats and mud smeared and this inside is hollow.

The royal throne is rotten.

This inside is a tree-eater that has eaten everything and is collapsing", says the woodcutter Anka Tagareva.

The leaks in the temple are also ruining.

Day after day, the illustrated biblical scenes and saints are disappearing.

In their place, moisture and mold emerge.

“The whole roof here.

It is like a roof made of tiles to cover the icon so that it does not rain.

It all came crashing down in a storm one night.

The icon of Constantine and Elena touched.

It was in a metal frame and we took it to the other temple", says Anka Tagareva.

When the bell tower tilted and the cross of the cube moved away, the storks that had been nesting on the top disappeared.

Since then, the collapsing church has become a pain for people.

The church was built 150 years ago.

"They collected stones, but under the influence of the Russian soldiers, thanks to them the temple was built.

It is in the Russian style", says Reneta Plevnelieva, mayor of the village of Parvenets.

Patriarch Neophyte will not perform the festive service at midnight

Although the building is a cultural monument of local importance, no complete renovation has been done so far, and the laity want to be able to light a candle and pray to God again.

In his temple.

"And with the Resurrection of Christ comes our hope.

This is a harbinger of the beginning of a new life, both with the coming of spring and with the Resurrection of Christ and the hope for the restoration of this temple, we are all hopeful," says Father Daniel, chairman of the church board.

For the restoration of the church, the board of trustees and the mayor of the municipality "Rodopi" started a large-scale donation campaign.

BGN 660,000 is needed for the complete repair.

There is already a ready project agreed with the National Institute for Immovable Cultural Heritage and the Plovdiv Metropolis.

"We have to collect half of these funds.

The other half will be provided by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

We have had talks with His Eminence Metropolitan Nikolay of Plovdiv and we need to collect half of this amount.

People got involved very actively.

We rely heavily on business.

This is our hope to collect these funds", says Pavel Mihailov, mayor of the municipality "Rodopi".

restoration

church

Parvenets village