The death in Bulgaria of Dobri Dobrev has been confirmed.
He was aged 103.
The death of a beggar is not normally announced on the BBC. The deaths of beggars in Bulgaria are even less likely to be reported here.
So who was Dobrev that he should draw the interest of the BBC?
For those conversant with a certain strand of Eastern Orthodox asceticism, Dobrev will be a familiar character. He long ago renounced the world and set himself to begging in front of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia. The money he collected, over the years amounting to many thousands of euros, he gave away to the cathedral, to orphanages and to monasteries.
Born on the eve of the First World War, in 1914, Dobrev grew up in Bailovo, a village about 13 miles east of the Bulgarian capital, Sofia. His father was killed in the war and his mother was left to raise the boy alone. During the Second World War, as a result of an aerial bombing, Dobrev lost much of his hearing. In 1940, he married and with his wife raised four children. He outlived this wife and two of these children.
After the Second World War, in Communist-controlled Bulgaria, Dobrev worked in a commune as a shepherd. Breaking Communist prohibitions, he would secretly visit shrines in the mountains to pray.
Around the year 2000, aged 86, Dobrev withdrew from the world. He gave away what he possessed and went to live close by his local church in Bailovo. From there, he walked each day to the front of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia to beg.
