Left-wing intellectuals petition against ‘smear campaign’ against Bulgarian Orthodox Church

3/1/2012 A group of left-wing intellectuals, in an open letter to Bulgarian Orthodox Church head Patriarch Maxim, have spoken out against what they call a smear campaign against the church. The group, which includes writers and academics – several of them former members of the Bulgarian Communist Party and some of them identified by the Dossier Commission as having collaborated with the country’s communist-era State Security – expressed outrage at what they called the “intrigues and dirty attacks against the Holy Church”.