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The Directorate for Cults in Bulgaria has refused residence permits to the Missionary Sisters of Charity and to the Salesians, after the entry into force of the new law according to which all the confessions, except the traditional Orthodox Church, are obliged to register in court. The registration procedure is the responsibility of the Directorate itself, which is an autonomous ministerial body for religious questions. In this transitional phase, in which the law has just been approved and the bureaucratic mechanism not yet perfected, no residence permits can be issued for foreign missionaries. This problem, however, is a long-standing one, because also under the preceding law all foreign religious had to register by presenting many documents both to the Directorate of Cults and to police headquarters. In the past permits have sometimes been issued only for a few months without any hope of them being renewed. “With this insecurity we cannot plan anything”, explains a Missionary Sister of Charity who was denied a residence permit. Another sister of the same congregation adds that the residence permits cost 4000 euros per year. “With our service to the poor we provide a help also to the country and this bureaucratic method is utterly unjust”. The same problems are faced by Protestant missionaries and all foreigners who work in the religious field in Bulgaria. Following the Pope’s visit in May 2002, relations between the Bulgarian State and the Holy See improved considerably and foreign religious who represent over 50% of all religious in Bulgaria hoped that the Directorate of Cults would change its way of registering them, because it is very difficult to have to come to the capital from all over Bulgaria and spend a lot of time in bureaucratic hassles. The president of the Bulgarian Episcopal Conference Msgr. Projkov, together with Protestants and Moslems, has expressed his dismay about the new law on cult to the President of the Republic.———————————————————————————————————– Sir Europa (English) N.ro assoluto : 1181 N.ro relativo : 11 Data pubblicazione : 14/02/2003
