The schism within the Bulgarian Orthodox Church is worsening. The judicial authorities have seized 250 churches and church buildings, the property of the alternative Orthodox Synod, and forcibly evicted from them the priests who put up any resistance. This situation is the consequence of the schism that arose within the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in 1992, when the head of the Directorate of religious organizations of the then government of Democratic Forces had declared Partriarch Maksim, elected in 1971, “illegitimate”, accusing him of having been appointed by the Communist Party, with which he had previously collaborated. To replace him as Patriarch, the alternative Synod had elected Metropolitan Pimen, who died in 1999. Meanwhile, however, a pan-Orthodox council had recognized the supreme authority of Maksim in 1998. On the basis of the new law on religious practice promulgated in 2003, all religious confessions, including the Catholic Church, must register to be able to operate on Bulgarian territory. A month ago the Synod chaired by Maksim asked the judicial authorities to intervene to compel the return of those buildings that, according to the patriarch, the alternative Synod had been illegally occupying. At the present time, the representatives of this latter Synod, led by Metropolitan Inokentij, are meeting in a garden in front of the church of Santa Sophia in which they celebrate mass and administer the sacraments. Faced by the demand that they rejoin the official Orthodox Synod, they replied that this “is unacceptable for their conscience”. Meanwhile Bulgarian society is questioning the role of the Church and the negative example set by the schism of the Orthodox Synod.
