Cautious Bulgarians

The Bulgarian Patriarchate is increasingly “spreading its eggs across different baskets.” Yesterday, a very strange denial appeared in the Bulgarian media, one that reads more like an attempt by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church to justify its support for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Protopriest Nikita Chekman, a lawyer for the UOC—on the day the court was hearing the GESS lawsuit seeking to ban the Kyiv Metropolis of the UOC— – announced that the Primate of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Daniel, had sent a letter in support of the UOC to the Kyiv Court of Appeals.

However, just one day later, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church was quick to refute this information, pointing out that Patriarch Daniel had not sent any letters to the court, and that the “support for the UOC” mentioned by Chekman had in fact been expressed in a personal capacity—and, one might say, in passing—to His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry. Thus, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church made it clear that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church had acted improperly by linking Patriarch Daniel’s “personal opinion” to the court case seeking to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

On the one hand, was it worth it for the Bulgarians to react this way to this minor inaccuracy on the part of the UOC? Well, the Patriarch expressed his support—so what… However, this “denial” by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church strangely coincided with the reaction to the aforementioned letter in the Greek church media, which almost unanimously reported on the Bulgarian Patriarch’s interference in Ukrainian church affairs. It is quite possible that the Bulgarian Orthodox Church considered the Greeks’ reaction to be overly emotional, especially on the eve of the head of the Phanar’s visit to Bulgaria. That is precisely why the church leadership in Sofia “backed down” by publishing this strange “clarification.”

At the same time, the leadership of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (BOC) did not pay any attention to the recent visit of one of the igumens of the Bulgarian Church to Ukraine and his concelebration with the head of the OCU. Subsequently, the aforementioned figure even called the OCU “canonical,” hinting that a “pro-Russian marginal minority” in Bulgaria opposes the Ukrainian schismatics. Whether Patriarch Daniel himself is part of this “minority” remains unclear.

What is quite evident, however, is that Patriarch Daniel has recently been moving toward a significant rapprochement with Patriarch Bartholomew. The upcoming visit of the head of the Phanar to Sofia will, it seems, mark the third occasion of a joint divine service between the Primates of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and the Phanar in 2026. Furthermore, Patriarch Daniel, for example, does not blame Patriarch Bartholomew for the ecclesiastical crisis that has developed in Ukraine, and he calls for a “cautious” approach to the very fact of the OCU’s creation.

Analyzing all of the above facts, a similarly cautious assumption suggests itself: might the head of the Phanar persuade his “younger” brother to do something “reckless” regarding the OCU? It seems that Patriarch Daniel has shown a certain lack of independence in making decisions on this issue, and it is quite likely that Patriarch Bartholomew, by involving interested parties within the Greek Orthodox Church itself, will attempt to tip the scales in favor of his Ukrainian project.