Metropolitan Transport

Clive Leviev-Sawyer
16/12/2011

First he had resigned, then he had not; first the car was his, then it was not; or perhaps the story about Varna Metropolitan Kiril and his Lincoln MKZ Hybrid was really about who next will head the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

The story preoccupied the Bulgarian-language media for days and provided fuel for a number of television breakfast talk shows.

It started with Kiril being seen arriving at a celebration of Nikulden – December 6, St Nicholas’s Day – in the car, invariably described in media reports as a “luxury limousine” and reportedly valued at $35 000.

Local media reported him as saying that friends had bought the car for him, and then the drama deepened with reports that he had resigned from the Holy Synod, the governing body of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, because he was unhappy about the way the Synod ran its affairs.

A late-night television report on the “resignation” could not resist the counterpoint of an interview with an impoverished monk, in an obvious jibe at the supposedly high-living church chief.

But then came the official denial from the Varna metropolitanate that Kiril had resigned from the Synod. Bulgarian National Radio added, helpfully, that resigning from the Holy Synod is a very difficult and complex business and it was rare for any such resignation ever to be accepted.

As to the car, it turned out that it was not owned by Kiril but by a private company. Initially, media reports said that no such company could be found in the commercial register, but by December 9, Bulgarian National Television (BNT) had established that the company that owned the car was managed by a former deputy governor of Varna, Yulian Gendov, and a businessman in the Black Sea city, Daniel Dobrev.

Gendov told BNT that the car was a basic model, by no means luxurious, and had been lent to Kiril for his use, indicating that this was a form of test-drive of the car on Bulgarian roads. The car, otherwise, is the only one of its kind in the country. The question of how long Kiril would have use of the car had not been discussed, Gendov was quoted as saying.

Kiril was steadfastly refusing to comment, but few others held back.

Talking points

While Darik Radio said that the bishops of Rousse and Pleven travelled by public transport and the bishop of Lovech used a Skoda, Gendov said that he knew that the Metropolitan’s Peugeot had broken down irretrievably a year before and since then Kiril had been relying on a worse-for-wear Toyota.

National History Museum director Bozhidar Dimitrov – customarily keen to comment on religious matters – defended Kiril by saying that there were other Metropolitans who had cars “five or six” times the price of the one being used by Kiril. (Bulgarian websites said that Plovdiv’s Metropolitan Nikolai has an Audi 08 and a BMW M5.)

Referring to the Christian story of Jesus entering Jerusalem at Passover on a donkey, Dimitrov said, “Can you imagine a Bulgarian bishop on a donkey?”

People should not meddle in church affairs, Dimitrov said, adding a quote from the Christian Bible, “let him who is without sin cast the first stone”. He said that the controversy had really to do with who would succeed Patriarch Maxim as the next head of the church. Reports frequently have named Kiril as a candidate.

But stones there were aplenty, as social anthropologist Haralan Alexandrov told BNT that people were profoundly indifferent to the doings of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, which spoke out on issues only occasionally, and then to attack – variously – Harry Potter and the singer Madonna.

“The Bulgarian Orthodox Church is remote, strange, laden with scandal and rejection, which in itself is sad,” Alexandrov said.

Professor Kalin Yanakiev said that several of the church’s bishops were remote from the priests and the laity and had become a religious caste that communicated only with businesses “especially those with funds of unknown origin”.

Left-wing political commentator Andrei Raichev wrote off the Bulgarian Orthodox Church as “morally bankrupt”.

BNT reporters met two monks who had been trying to take a collection for church charities in the streets of Varna, only to be told by passersby – they said – “we don’t want to give money for Kiril’s car”.

Father Doncho Alexandrov, spokesperson for the metropolitanate, said that the car was, in fact, a money-saver. As a hybrid, it was fuel-efficient, switching over to battery power.

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