Bulgarian students follow in the footsteps of Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer

Students from the Bulgarian Sunday School "Ivan Vazov" in Zagreb and from Sofia's 33rd Language High School "St. Sofia" united their enthusiasm and efforts to enrich the knowledge about a person with an invaluable contribution to the development of Bulgarian intelligentsia after the Liberation and who once said: "I have always loved and honoured the worthy, sound in mind and heart and especially hardworking and honest Bulgarian people."

At the "G. S. Rakovski - 1925" community center in Sofia, young people, together with their mentors from the "Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer" Civic Association, presented a multimedia project dedicated to the work of the Croatian Catholic bishop.

Strossmayer lived for ninety years. From 1815 to 1905, he managed to earn his place in history as a Catholic bishop and theologian, a public and political activist, a patron and supporter of Bulgarian education and literature.

"We in Croatia know Josip Juraj Strossmayer as a man who donated all his personal funds for the construction of the huge cathedral in Đakovo," says Iglika Kasabova, head of the Bulgarian school in Zagreb. "Every year, the Bulgarian community honors his work, recognizing him as one of our enlighteners, and on November 1, representatives of diplomacy, public figures and students from our school go there. Our students know well who Bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer is."

Tsentserushka Andreeva, who until recently was secretary of the largest community center in the capital, where a Croatian-Bulgarian cultural center named after the bishop has been created, adds an interesting fact about the activities of Josip Juraj Strossmayer:

"His greatest merit is helping the Miladinov brothers publish «Bulgarian Folk Songs». After collecting them for six months, they went to Bishop Strossmayer and presented him with the accumulated material. He told them: «Write the texts in Bulgarian, because now they are written with Greek letters and then I will help you». I would also like to highlight his help for the education of Bulgarian students in Zagreb, who subsequently returned to their homeland and played an extremely large role in the spiritual development of our nation. He has many more merits, so his work should be popularized among the youth."

The students' project contains three components - the book "All for Faith and the Fatherland!", a documentary film and a photo exhibition, and was implemented under the national program "The Untold Stories of Bulgarians" of the Ministry of Education and Science.

In it, students take on the role of researchers, learning to ask questions like real reporters. Together with friends from the Gornjogradska Gymnasium in Zagreb, they create the texts and concept of the posters with Croats who, encouraged by Josip Juraj Strossmayer, have done something remarkable for Bulgaria – teacher Clotilda Cvetisic, rector of the Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" Stepan Jurinić, writer and Catholic priest Franjo Rački. The collected information is summarized in a book by the students' teachers and mentors.

"What excites our children the most is that Bulgarian children studied in Zagreb," Iglika Kasabova says. "They had never imagined that so far back in time there were Bulgarians who received their high school and university education there and then returned to Bulgaria. The other thing that surprised them was that Josip Juraj Strossmayer communicated with small high schools in our country very warmly."

According to the school principal, students get very excited when they work on extracurricular projects.

"Many of them come from modern bilingual, multilingual communities, from progressive schools, and working with texts and photos, making collages and videos is an everyday part of their work in school," she adds. "For them, the more boring part of the Sunday school is learning texts, memorizing, reading. They prefer to learn things on the go."

At the end of the school year, Iglika Kasabova says: "We end the year with nearly 40 children. 80% of them successfully received diplomas for the completed school year, and some of them failed, but that does not mean that they will not try again next year." According to her, the biggest challenge is to maintain the children's initial enthusiasm, because as the curriculum in school becomes more complicated, their lives become increasingly dynamic.

The new school year will also be dynamic, Kasabova says. In the autumn the Sunday School will reopen for Bulgarian children from three countries – Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Slovenia.

"We have descendants of gardeners, opera singers, as well as new emigration," Iglika Kasabova says. "We plan to tell the stories of Bulgarians who have been living in Croatia for some time. The personalities from the fields of art, education, literature, and even Asian meditative and martial arts are very impressive."