site.btaIcons Donated by Bulgarian Patriarch Daniil and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew Installed in New Lab on Livingston Island

Icons of the Virgin and Child and of St Demetrius were hung on Tuesday in the new laboratory of Bulgaria's St Kliment Ohridski Antarctic Base on Livingston Island. The icons were donated by Bulgarian Patriarch Daniil and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.

Prof. Christo Pimpirev, head of the 34th Bulgarian Antarctic Expedition, said: "The icon of the Virgin and Child was presented during a ceremony at the St Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, led by Bulgarian Patriarch Daniil. It was given to be placed at the Bulgarian base, to watch over our Bulgarian settlement."

The icon has been placed in the building of the base's new laboratory, which was opened last year and has been operational and inhabited since this year. The building includes sleeping quarters accommodating up to 14 people, as well as biology and geology laboratories and a shared laboratory.

"We also hung the icon of St Demetrius, which was presented to us during a visit by a delegation of the Bulgarian Antarctic Institute to Constantinople to meet Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. He donated it personally, so that it too may serve as a guardian of the Bulgarian base," Prof. Pimpirev added.

He explained that the icons were officially installed in the new building on Tuesday as "guardians of future generations" of polar researchers.

The Bulgarian naval research vessel Sv. Sv. Kiril i Metodii (RSV 421) departed for Antarctica from Varna (on the Black Sea) on November 7, 2025. After a month-long voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, the ship arrived at the Argentine naval base in Mar del Plata on December 13.

BTA has had a national press club on board the ship since 2022 and another on Livingston Island since February 2024. These are added to the news agency’s other 41 national press clubs (33 in Bulgaria, seven abroad in neighbouring countries and in nations with large Bulgarian communities, and one mobile National Book Press Club). BTA's Director General Kiril Valchev announced ahead of the fourth voyage to Antarctica on November 7, 2025 that the national news agency would send a special correspondent in January-February 2026.

He said the press clubs exist thanks to the generous support of RSV 421 and Bulgaria’s St Kliment Ohridski Base, which provide the necessary facilities. 

The news items of BTA's special correspondents on RSV 421 and Antarctica are freely available in Bulgarian and English on the agency's website. They can be used free of charge by all media, with attribution to BTA. Valchev recalled that thanks to its correspondents, the news agency appears among the top results on Google when searching for the phrase “Antarctica correspondent”.