From Italy to "Belene": The struggle of a priest to preserve the memory of the victims of communism

Saturday, Feb 7, 2026

Mediapool

Italian priest Paolo Cortez visits Belene, caring for churches and commemorating communist victims since 2011.

🔗 Read the article on mediapool.bg

[This is an automatically generated summary, for reference only]

Italian priest Paolo Cortese’s journey starts in Bergamo, passes through Como, Rome, and Milan, ultimately leading to the Bulgarian town of Belene. There, he cares for the churches “Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary” and “Saint Anthony of Padua,” the local Catholic community, and the memory of the “Belene” concentration camp. Cortese first visited the camp in 2011 during an annual commemoration of victims of communism.

🔗 Read the original article

Previous page Georgia: How political crises threaten the environment
Next page There is no place for old dogs. In Sofia, over 1000 animals are in shelters, while in Bucharest, they are being euthanized on a large scale

© 2026 Pulse - Europe beyond the beat


PULSE is an initiative for cross-border collaborative journalism in Europe co-funded by the European Commission under Grant Agreement n. PO 4500158093.

PULSE is an initiative coordinated by OBCT that has been promoting intensive journalistic cross-border collaborations in Europe since 2024. Its main aim is to help strengthen the European public sphere by reporting on and telling stories from new and diverse perspectives.

At the heart of PULSE are 10 leading national news outlets (Delfi – Lithuania, Deník Referendum – Czechia, Der Standard – Austria, EfSyn – Greece, El Confidencial – Spain, Gazeta Wyborcza – Poland, HotNews – Romania, HVG – Hungary, Il Sole 24 Ore – Italy, Mediapool – Bulgaria) and three transnational organisations, including OBCT , n-ost and Voxeurop .

Additional outlets and journalists are involved as associate partners, including EUobserver , Føljeton (Denmark), H-Alter (Croatia), Levila (Estonia), Rubryka (Ukraine), and The Journal Investigates (Ireland).

PULSE is driven by a sort of virtual transnational newsroom made up of journalists from all the publications involved. It collaboratively produces new journalistic content on European issues on a daily basis, coming in many different languages. The editorial output amounts to over a thousand publications per year, mostly in article form.

PULSE also runs 4 thematic networks open to any European journalist interested in crucial issues such as EU enlargement, relations between the EU and other global powers, the EU’s green transition, or media and the information society. These networks function as online communities and periodically publish calls for pitches.