Bulgaria marks Monday the 100th anniversary of the birth of famous prophet Vanga.

A mass will be served in her honor at the St. Petka Church with scores expected to gather at the "Rupite" site in Bulgaria's southwestern town of Petrich, sometimes referred to as the Jerusalem of the Balkans.

A monument in honor of Vanga will be unveiled Monday – it was created by sculptor, Prof. Emil Popov, and is given to the site as donation. It is made from brass, covered with sliver, and will be erected left from the bridge which leads to the church.

The monument is 1.8-meter high and portrays the clairvoyant sitting on a bench, near a table, the same way she was known  to do when accepting people in need of her help.

Vangeliya Gushterova, aka Vanga or Baba, i.e. Grandmother Vanga, (1911-1996) was born in Strumitsa, today in the Republic of Macedonia, but spent most of her life in Rupite near Petrich in southwestern Bulgaria.

She lost her sight at the age of 12 during a sudden strong storm when she was carried away by powerful winds and later found buried under a pile of rocks in a field. In 1925 she was placed at a special facility for the blind and spent three years there, but when her stepmother died, Vanga returned home to help care for her younger siblings. Soon after, her psychic abilities become known across Bulgaria and later the world. Vanga used to explain them with the presence of invisible creatures of unclear origin around her.

She died in August 1996, but the town of Petrich still feels her magic.

The neighborhood near Vanga's church, St. Petka, is recognized as a place charged with powerful positive energy.

The long list of political events predicted by Vanga include the start of World War II, the deaths of Hitler and Stalin, the democratic transition in Bulgaria in the 1990s, the Warsaw Pact intervention in the former Czechoslovakia, the political unrest in Lebanon, the election victory and the assassinations of India's Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi, the breakup of the Soviet Union, the war in Nicaragua in 1979, the death of Bulgaria's Tsar Boris III in 1943, the "return" of his exiled son, Simeon Saxe-Coburg (Tsar of the Bulgarians in 1943-1946, Prime Minister of the Republic of Bulgaria in 2001-2005) but not as a Tsar, the sinking of the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk in the late 1990s, the September 11 terrorist attacks, the coming together of Russia, China, and India.

Some of Baba Vanga's prophecies yet expected to come true are the creation of a union of Balkan states, inventions of cures for cancer and AIDS, a depreciation of gold.

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