Georgi Todorov in front of FACTS: Never before has the BOC entered into collaboration with schismatics (VIDEO)

Metropolitan Nikolay of Plovdiv personally led the Saturday liturgy last week in the church “St. Stephen” in Istanbul. His Eminence was a special guest of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. After that, Metropolitan Nicholas participated together with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in the service in the Fish Church. As is known, the Bulgarian Holy Synod did not send representatives to the last ecumenical council of the Orthodox churches on the island of Crete. Later, however, the tension was overcome, and His Holiness Bartholomew was in Bulgaria for the pilgrimage to the mortal remains of Patriarch Neophyte, who died in March.

“Never before has the Bulgarian Orthodox Church entered into communion with schismatics. There are schisms all over the world. There are major and minor schisms. What Nikolay did, no one has ever allowed himself to do. This is a serious violation of the canon of the church. However, this will be an even heavier boomerang, because it is anti-Bulgarian. The moment we give the Patriarch of Constantinople the right to interfere in the canonical territory of an autocephalous church, we automatically give him the right to interfere in our canonical territory. We submit to obedience against the principle of autocephaly of the local churches, announced Lili Marinkova in the FACTS studio. and the show “Conversation“ the theologian Georgi Todorov.

“Plovdiv Metropolitan Nikolay, together with Metropolitans Starozagorski and Dorostolski, created a kind of precedent, and this happened both before the election in Sliven and for the Patriarch of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. Even this ministry of Nicholas in Istanbul was not regulated by the Holy Synod. The website of the BOC is silent about this action, which is without precedent. "Never before has the Bulgarian Orthodox Church entered into communion with schismatics," the theologian added.

See more from the conversation in the VIDEO.