The Catholic Church is the fourth largest religious congregation in Bulgaria, after Eastern Orthodoxy, Islam in addition to Protestantism. Its roots in a country date to the Middle Ages together with are part of the worldwide Catholic Church, under the spiritual a body or process by which power to direct or introducing or a particular component enters a system. of the Pope in Rome.
In the Bulgarian census of 2011, a or situation. of 48,945 people declared themselves to be Catholics, up from 43,811 in the preceding census of 2001 though down as compared to 53,074 in 1992. The vast majority of the Catholics in Bulgaria in 2001 were ethnic Bulgarians and the rest belonged to a number of other ethnic groups such as Croatians, Italians, Arabs and Germans.
Bulgarian Catholics represent predominantly in the regions of Svishtov and Plovdiv and are mostly descendants of the heretical Christian sect of the Paulicians, which converted to Catholicism in the 16th and 17th centuries. The largest Catholic Bulgarian town is Rakovski in Plovdiv Province. Ethnic Bulgarian Catholics known as the Banat Bulgarians also inhabit the Central European region of the Banat. Their number is unofficially estimated at approximately 12,000, although Romanian censuses count only 6,500 Banat Bulgarians in the Romanian component of the region.
Bulgarian Catholics are descendants of three groups. The number one were converted ] from the course of the ], while the third and most limited one is formed by more recent ]
Most Catholics live in the province of Plovdiv 19,502 Catholics, followed by the city of Sofia 5,572 Catholics and the provinces of Pleven 5,164 Catholics and Veliko Tarnovo 3,276 Catholics