Vecer, Macedonia: Macedonian Bulgarians threaten to establish new Church

24/1/2011

Skopje. Bulgarians in Macedonia threaten to establish a new church, Macedonian Vecer daily writes on Monday.

The Bulgarian Culture Club in Skopje has sent a letter to the head of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Stefan, in which the club asks him to apologise for the non-Christian statements, with which he has anathematised the Macedonian Bulgarians, saying that they are traitors. Otherwise they will require from the Bulgarian Orthodox Church to restore its historical eparchies for the thousands of Macedonian Bulgarians, who live on the territory of the country.
“As it is well know, after the break-up of Tito’s Yugoslavia, thousands of Orthodox Christians from the Republic of Bulgaria regained their Bulgarian ethnic identity, declaring their Bulgarian origin.

Your statement is some kind of an anathema and a refusal on behalf of the Macedonian Orthodox Church to take care of the spiritual needs of the Macedonian Bulgarians,” Lazar Mladenov writes in the letter to Archbishop Stefan.
Vecer daily points out that the motive for the letter of the Bulgarian Culture Club in Skopje was the statement of Archbishop Stefan in which he compares Bishop Jovan Vraniskovski to Spaska Mitrova.

“The idea of ‘Bulgarisation’ of the Archbishopric of Ohrid was front-burner issue on several national televisions in Sofia. Vraniskovski over the last nine years has been presenting the Archbishopric as part of the Serbian Orthodox Church, while when in Greece – as part of the Greek Orthodox Church; and while in Sofia – as part of the Bulgarian. His statements encouraged the Bulgarian nationalists, who raised the idea about a new pseudo church in Macedonia,” the newspaper comments.

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