A Piece of Bulgaria in The Hague: St Michael and Gabriel Church

We met Aaltje van den Heuvel-ter Horst at the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in The Hague. Born in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, she now lives in Hoek van Holland, which is part of the Rotterdam municipality. Aaltje comes from a bicultural family: her mother is Bulgarian and her father is Dutch, having spent two decades living in Bulgaria. The family moved to the Netherlands in 1996, when Aaltje was 15.

Today, she has built a life of her own. She is married to a Dutch man and is the mother of two children: a 15-year-old son and a 13-year-old daughter. She works as a financial administrator and is also actively involved in community life, serving as treasurer of the Bulgarian Orthodox parish in The Hague.

Aaltje witnessed the early years of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church community in the Netherlands firsthand. Reflecting on that formative period, she shared her memories with the team behind our specialised podcast, Bridge of Faith.

'At the beginning of the 2000s, Father Rumen Kalaydzhiev was sent here on a mission to establish a parish. I clearly remember that there was very little organisation at the time — we simply didn’t know who the Bulgarians living in the Netherlands were. On 24 May, we set up a small table at the embassy with sheets of paper and began collecting names, phone numbers and addresses. Back then, there were no more than 200 people, but today we are many times that number.”

Her mother, engineer Fimiya Margaritova-ter Horst, played an active role in setting up the community and securing a place to celebrate the Divine Liturgy in Bulgarian. She has attended the current church since 1997, when it was under the care of a Russian Orthodox congregation. At that time, most of its members were elderly and finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the church.

‘The church wardens were elderly and well into their later years. By the year 2000, they wanted to step back simply because only five or six people remained,’ Aaltje recalls. ‘My mother spoke with them at the time and they said, “Oh, how wonderful that you want a church! Please take over the lease so the church can remain open.’”

Thus, the lease agreement for the building with the Municipality of The Hague was transferred to the newly established Bulgarian Orthodox Church community. ‘I believe it was in June that the contract was formally handed over from the Russian church community to the Bulgarian parish of St Paisius of Hilendar,’ Aaltje ter Horst clarifies.

According to her, the name of the Bulgarian church community was chosen by Father Rumen. At the time, they did not know the original dedication of the church building, but based on the placement of the icon of the Holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel on the iconostasis, they concluded that the church was dedicated to them. Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco founded three Orthodox churches in the Netherlands — in The Hague, Amsterdam, and Arnhem. The Church of the Holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel, established in 1954, is one of them.

The 25-year history of the Bulgarian church in The Hague is also, in many ways, a family history for our interviewee. Much of her conscious life has been connected to this place. She remembers working alongside her parents on renovations after the Bulgarian community took responsibility for the church in 2000. It was here that she was married to her husband, a Dutchman, and it is here that their children have grown up. Given this, the question 'What does this church mean to her?' — receives an unambiguous answer:

'It is a small piece of Bulgaria — no matter how far we are from Bulgaria. We miss it. And here you receive that love, that beauty of the Bulgarian spirit. You feel at home, and for me that is very important. We need to be part of a community; to come together and meet friends and acquaintances, both old and new. For me, this is home.’

"Home, family, support, security" — these are the answers we hear most often when we ask what the Bulgarian church means to our compatriots. This is also what the church in The Hague represents for Aaltje ter Horst: home and reassurance. Especially since its purchase. She believes that owning the building since 2018 has given Bulgarian Orthodox believers in the Netherlands an added sense of security. They are deeply grateful for this — to God, to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, and to the Bulgarian state.

She notes with satisfaction that the community continues to grow, albeit slowly, and hopes that the church will remain just as full in the years to come.

Members of the community often point to the role of the priest as a key factor in the unity of the parish. Our interlocutor also speaks warmly of the clergy who have served in The Hague over the years. She fondly remembers Father Rumen Kalaydzhiev and Father Ivan Manev, and she is grateful for their current priest, Father Nikolay Nikolov. She notes that, for the last 25 years, God has always provided them with the right priest at the right time — one with the personal qualities and God-given gifts. She says that what unites them all is their dedication to the priestly ministry and their shared understanding that it is a mission entrusted to them by God.

Editor: Elena Karkalanova

Posted in English by Elizabeth Radkova