Sofia’s Holy Synod has promised full cooperation and support for the establishment of a canonical status of the Macedonian Orthodox Church /MOC/ – this is the response to the MOC request for establishing unity with the Bulgarian Orthodox Church /BOC/. It should also form the basics for Eucharistic unity with the rest of the local Orthodox churches. A synod committee has been created for the respective negotiations with MOC and the other regional churches. This comes to prompt that the cooperation decision was an action which only marked the beginning of a long and complicated process.

The MOC voiced to BOC its gratitude for the support and Macedonian Premier Zoran Zaev expressed his expectation that other Orthodox churches would follow the example of the Bulgarian one. Prelates and public figures in both countries hailed the event and some said the BOC acted bravely and compensated for historical injustice. While the Synod was having its sitting in Sofia, the positive decision was being waited for in silence by many in front of the Synod Palace.

At the same time others see cautiousness and diplomacy in the stance of BOC. The Ohrid Archbishopric is currently in a state of schism, imposed by the Serbian Church back in the 1960s. In the beginning of this century there were actually two Ohrid archbishoprics – the official Macedonian Church, unrecognized globally, and another one, dominated by pro-Serbian priests and recognized by the Serbian Church as autonomous, but not autocephalous. Some theologians say that the recognition of a non-canonic church would place the Bulgarian Orthodox Church itself into schism. On the other hand schisms can only be revoked by the churches that have imposed them. In this case it is the Serbian Church and this suggests that BOC cannot be the first to recognize the MOC as autocephalous.

The BOC stance is actually the only reasonable one within this complicated situation with canonic norms. The Holy Synod in Sofia didn’t recognize the self-proclaimed Macedonian Orthodox Church, as autocephaly is possible only in case of recognition by all the other 14 Orthodox churches. In fact BOC only promised support and cooperation for winning this common recognition. That was done not only because of good feelings, but also due to its own bitter experience: the BOC was in schism, imposed by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in the period 1872 – 1945 because it had proclaimed itself autocephalous and not autonomous, the way a Sultan’s epistle had recognized it.

The latest events in the relations between BOC and MOC are more than positive from the big picture’s perspective. On the one hand, those coincide with a process of visible normalization of bilateral political relations and on the other – there is this trend for looking for a way out of the Skopje – Athens argument on the name of Macedonia. Then on the same day when the BOC decision came out, Macedonian media reported that the Skopje government was willing to adopt the middle-of-the-road name Republic of New Macedonia or Northern Macedonia. No official source has confirmed the news yet, but the public feels this progress towards Macedonia’s exit out of the state of international isolation along several directions – political and ecclesiastical.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev