Bulgarian Orthodox Church
Post-Communist Fallout of Orthodox Church Corruption
Differing lines of succession ? Where is the "real" Church - for a Bulgarian ?
The Times (UK)
June 18, 1992, Thursday
HEADLINE: Bulgarian church driven by squabbling bishops
BYLINE: By Roger Boyes, East Europe Correspondent
The Bulgarian Orthodox Church is being torn by an internal dispute that has seen priests punching each other, bishops offering competing Eucharists, and theology students staging sit-ins.
The Orthodox hierarchy, under Patriarch Maksim, was widely suspected of collaborating with the secret service during the communist era. Certainly under Patriarch Maksim religion was pushed to the very fringes of public life, hundreds of churches were closed, and many are now in ruins. In the view of the new democratic government, the Orthodox hierarchy is one of the last structures of the former communist regime. Father Hristofor Sabev, a dissident priest who was jailed by the communists for def ending the Turkish minority in Bulgaria, has been leading a campaign to oust the patriarch. As head of the parliamentary committee for religion, he was well placed to lead a religious coup. Under a 1949 law, the Orthodox church is subordinate to the state and priests receive government salaries.
The committee of Father Sabev (recently consecrated as a bishop) gathered evidence against the patriarch and the holy synod, showing that Patriarch Maksim's election and activities had violated canon law. The synod was declared illegal and a new temporary synod, headed by Metropolitan Pimen, was set up and legally registered. Metropolitan Pimen will rule the church until a council of bishops meets next autumn. But Patriarch Maksim is refusing to budge. His supporters have moved to expel Metropolitan Pimen from the church. The Bulgarian Socialist Party (the former communists) is backing the patriarch in the dispute.
The result has been fierce clashes whenever there is a religious holiday. The Orthodox Easter threw Bulgarian television into confusion since there were three rival services competing for coverage. Patriarch Maksim's service was celebrated outside rather than inside the patriarchal church in Veliko Tarnovo, partly because the building is compromised by communism: it includes a fresco of Ludmilla Zhivkova, the late daughter of the disgraced communist leader, Todor Zhivkov. The celebrations of Corpus Christi on June 4 saw old and new Bulgarian bishops trying to seize control of the Aleksandr Nevski church in Sofia. Some priests were punching each other and the church had to be closed briefly. Later, two separate services were held. The feuding continued.
Patriarch Maksim's Eucharists are being boycotted and leaflets accuse him of being a Bulgarian agent and a KGB agent. Metropolitan Pimen, meanwhile, is being denounced as a crazed man determined to destroy the unity of the Bulgarian church. The new synod is holding a sit-in in the headquarters of the old.
A BAD Example to the World: Bulgarian Church Persecutes its own
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