E/CN.4/1988/4 5 page 8 'Our Orthodox Church, unlike some other churches, has been historically credited with helping to preserve the feelings of national identity of the Bulgarian people. Through centuries of severe tribulations, in the struggle for liberation of our nation from foreign domination, the Bulgarian Church has been a defender and protector of the Bulgarian national spirit...'. As early as the beginning of the tenth century, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was recognized as an autonomous patriarchate. At present, it is headed by Patriarch Maxim who was recently awarded [the] 13 century-old Bulgaria [award] by the State Council of the People's Republic of Bulgaria. The supreme body of this church organization is the Holy Synod. There are churches in the populated areas as well as over 100 monasteries with resident clergy. The Church publishes its own organ, the Church Gazette, and its own magazine, Spiritual Culture, and its publishing house turns out the necessary religious literature. Clerics are trained at the Theological Seminary and the Theological Academy. The Bulgarian State takes great care of, and allocates considerable funds for, religious monuments of culture - churches, monasteries, murals, icons, old manuscripts, etc. The Bulgarian catholics of both rites are also free to profess their religion: the Roman Catholics of the Western Rite (who have two bishops) and Roman Catholics of the Eastern Rite (Uniats), who have an apostolic exarch in Sofia. The members of Protestant religious communities - Pentacostalists, Adventists, Congregationalists, Methodists, Baptists - are also completely free to exercise their religion. The members of the Armeno-Gregorian Church found a warm welcome in Bulgarian society at the end of the last century and the outset of this century, when newly liberated Bulgaria hospitably opened its doors to the Armenians who had been subjected to genocide. Nowadays, as in the past, Armeno-Gregorians, led by the Eparchial Council of the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church, enjoy full freedom in the exercise of their religion. The Judaic denomination is guided by the Central Ecclesiastical Jewish Council. The members of this denomination attend their synagogues in Sofia and Plovdiv. The historical fact that the Bulgarian Jews, including members of the Judaic denomination, were saved from Fascist persecution and terror by their Bulgarian compatriots during the Second World War II is common knowledge. I would like to go into more details concerning the Islamic religion, on which you have addressed a number of questions to us in the enclosure to your letter. Islam is professed by Bulgarian Muslims who are an integral part of the Bulgarian people and are neither ethnically nor nationally related to the Turks. There are no 'ethnical Turks* or 'Turkish minority' to which you refer in the enclosure to your letter. In the years of the five-century-long Turkish oppression, ethnic Turks lived in our lands, most were representatives of the State authorities, feudal administration, army and police. Along with the retreating Ottoman army in 1878, the ethnic Turks and some Bulgarian