On May 23, Metropolitan Theodorit of Laodicea (Ecumenical Patriarchate) announced that Patriarch Bartholomew will travel to Bulgaria for the election and enthronement of the Bulgarian Patriarch on June 30. For the sake of this, the patriarch will even shorten his visit to Greece.
Our source from the Ruse Metropolis confirmed this information: Bartholomew will leave for Sofia directly from Arta on June 29. However, the Laodicean Metropolitan does not mention for what purpose Bartholomew is coming: the Ecumenical Patriarch wants not only to attend the electoral council, but also to preside over it!
For those who know the procedure for electing a patriarch and remember how it was in 2013, this may sound silly. Bartholomew's chairmanship of the Council or even his presence at the meetings as an honored guest contradicts the Charter and customs of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (BOC). But Metropolitan Nicholas of Plovdiv promised the Greeks that he would solve this problem at the Synod meeting on June 20.
These secret arrangements were first discussed with Metropolitans Nahum of Rusensky and Nikolay of Plovdiv during the visit of Patriarch Bartholomew to the funeral of the Bulgarian Patriarch Neophyte in Sofia in March of this year. After that, Nahum and Nikolay were invited to Istanbul. Finally, the agreement was reached during the May trip of Metropolitan Nikolay and his supporters to Istanbul, where he met with the bishops of the “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” (PCU), which were not accepted for communion by the Synod of the BOC.
Besides the obligation to demonstrate the authority of the Ecumenical Patriarch by inviting him to the elections and ensuring his presidency of the Council, Metropolitan Nicholas promised to help elevate Phanar's devoted friend, Metropolitan Naum, to the position of First Hierarch of the BOC, and then to organized his collaboration with the bishops of the OCU created by Bartholomew.
In return, the Greeks promised Metropolitan Nicholas the inviolability of his influence in the BOC and full control over the Synod and its decisions. But is it possible to take their promises at face value?
The official position of the Ecumenical Patriarchate is that the only acceptable Orthodox nationalism is Greek. In Greek theology, the national feelings of any other Orthodox people are called ethnophiletism. And what the Greeks don't particularly like is our independence. The Bulgarian people are the only Orthodox people who, by a council dogmatic decision, are forbidden to feel national feelings: in 1872, the anti-Bulgarian Council of Constantinople declared Bulgarian nationalism a heresy.
We well remember what such “dogma“ led to: in 1905, during the genocide against the Bulgarians in Thrace and the shameful massacre in Zagorichani, the Greek metropolitans blessed the execution of the civilian Bulgarian population.
It is naive to believe that Patriarch Bartholomew is coming here for the good of the Bulgarian Church and not for his own interests. Under Patriarch Bartholomew, the pressure on Phanar steadily increased. He was the person who, in 1998, at the Council in Sofia, called on Patriarch Maxim to resign and actually did everything to prevent the split from being fixed and the forces of the BOC to be undermined. However, the Church was united and Patriarch Maxim happily headed it, much to the annoyance of Constantinople, and so for 14 years.
With renewed vigor, Bartholomew's anti-Bulgarian activism resumed in 2016: in order to force the Bulgarian Church to participate in the Council of Crete, which imposed the Greek agenda on world Orthodoxy, he exerted unprecedented pressure on Patriarch Neophytes. Also, since 2016, the Patriarch of Constantinople supports Archimandrite Haralampi Nichev, who escaped from the BOC and participated in a number of anti-Bulgarian actions (by the way, Nichev is a close friend of Metropolitan Nikolai and a good friend of Metropolitan Naum).
Do we need to remind that every visit of Bartholomew to Bulgaria ends with scandal? So, in 2015, he publicly called us and our ancestors schismatics and demanded the removal of the monument of Patriarch Antim Bulgarian from the territory of our temple in Edirne, and in 2024, over the coffin of Patriarch Neofit, he vengefully reprimanded the deceased for his non-compliance with &ldquo ;the party line” of the Greeks and refused him to participate in the Council of Crete.
Nevertheless, Nahum surrendered to the mercy of the Greeks without a fight – in exchange for a fictitious patriarchy. In truth, one could hardly expect anything else from him: the metropolitan never had a strong character and authority, he preferred to solve problems with other people's hands. For his part, the Metropolitan of Plovdiv hopes in vain to maintain his influence after the election of Naum, since Fanar has not forgotten Nicholas' claims about the Ukrainian schismatics, whose sin “is not washed away even by blood”. His claims about the Greeks have not been forgotten either. Naum will remain patriarch, but under the complete control of Fanar, and Nikolai will remain with his intrigues and authoritarian habits.
One way or another, precisely thanks to the weaknesses and passions of these bishops, the issue of candidacy for the Bulgarian patriarchal throne was resolved not within Bulgaria, but in Turkey for the first time in years. This is not bad for Turkey, but it is a bad sign for our Church. It seems that the patriarchal elections will become the new Zagorichani for our Church. Will the Bulgarian people say their hard word?