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Joseph Sokolsky (Bulgarian: Йосиф Соколски, Gabrovo, Ottoman Empire 1786 – died in Kiev, Russian Empire, 30 September 1879) was the first senior Eastern Orthodox Bulgarian clergyman to convert to Catholicism, thus becoming a pioneer of the Bulgarian Byzantine Catholic Church. Sokolsky negotiated with Vatican a formal union due to Phanariotes domination over Bulgarian Orthodoxy and gained Catholic recognition in 1861 when Pope Pius IX named him Archbishop for the Bulgarians of the Byzantine Rite. He was also accepted in that capacity by the Ottoman Empire.[1]