Communique of the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Orthodox Archbishopric of Ohrid

Orthodox Archbishopric of Ohrid- Serbian Orthodox Church

October 15th, 2009
15. October 2009 – 21:03

The Basic Court in Veles sentenced in absence His Eminence Archbishop of Ohrid and Metropolitan of Skopje Jovan to imprisonment on two years and six months for a criminal offence “evasion” . Except that, the court ordered that Archbishop pays the compensation to the schismatic MOC in the amount of 14,804.211 denars which is 240,000 EUR. How the court ordered this sort of sum, when the schismatic MOC requested the compensation of 20,083.000 denars or 330,000 EUR, is known only to the court. Though, the expertise showed that Archbishop did not take any denar for himself, and all what was being purchased ,while he was responsible for Dioceses where he was bishop, has been left as the inventory of the schismatic MOC. Because of that, Archbishop was released two times by the court of the first instance, but the court of appeals brought back the procedure on a new trial.

There is no one in Macedonia who is not familiar that the trials against Archbishop motivated politically and with a political background. One thing is certain that the schismatic MOC will not get negotiations about its status until the state authorities are still hunting Archbishop.

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