Is the Macedonian Church sitting on two chairs?
Apologies for sending this brief a little late. I had an unexpected trip to the Balkans and my homeland. This is a photo I took of St. Ekaterina, a small church overlooking the Polog valley with the stunning Shar mountains in the background. It makes a nice introduction to the theme of this week’s brief.
Not in the mood for reading? Tune in to the narrated version of the newsletter instead.
Executive summary
In an unexpected move, the Macedonian Orthodox Church (Ohrid Archbishopric) has set up a commission to examine Ukrainian autocephaly.
This step is probably an effort by the MOC-OA to buy some time until the general and presidential elections in North Macedonia (April/May 2024) and the formation of the new government.
MOC-OA claims that the only condition for the Ecumenical Patriarch (EP) to issue a Tomos of autocephaly is recognising the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which the Ecumenical Patriarch has not publicly stated.
A centre-right government with VMRO-DPMNE in power is less likely to bring recognition to OCU. Instead, closer cooperation with the ROC will result.
The Macedonian Orthodox Church, which has been on the margins of Orthodoxy for over five decades, has become one of the hardcore opponents of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, questioning its canonicity and place in the family of Orthodox churches.
All of this might soon change as, in a sudden move, MOC-OA’s Holy Synod decided to re-examine its position on Ukraine by forming a commission that is set to analyse Ukrainian autocephaly. The decision of the Synod came unexpectedly, a day after the MOC-OA delegation headed by the church’s Primate Abp. Stefan returned from a visit to the Vatican. What has changed in the calculations of the MOC-OA? Or has anything changed? Is the move to form a commission just an excuse to rebuff any international/state pressure on the church and to buy time until a familiar political structure comes back into power, bearing in mind that North Macedonia is in an election year?
The relationship between the Macedonian and Ukrainian churches extends beyond the ecclesiastical, and opposition to the new Ukrainian church is illogical when taken into the context of the ongoing Russian aggression. North Macedonia, one of the newest NATO member states, has provided a great deal of old-era ammunition and aircraft (planes and helicopters) to the authorities in Kyiv and has been supportive of Ukraine’s EU ambitions.
If the MOC-OA continues to reject the OCU, it means that it is following the Russian Orthodox Church’s lead on the matter. This gives the ROC another avenue for expanding its influence in Southeast Europe. If the MOC-OA decides in favour of a relationship with the OCU it would get a step closer to its own long-awaited Tomos of autocephaly, which it hopes will be granted by the Ecumenical Patriarch.
With general and presidential elections coming up in April and May and the likely change in the government, bringing the centre-right VMRO-DPMNE back to power, the MOC-OA will continue warming its relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church and its main intermediary in Southeast Europe, the Serbian Orthodox Church. The problem over the naming of the church is the hot potato that neither the MOC-OA nor a VMRO-led government would like to deal with, and this may sway the MOC-OA towards a familiar territory – closer to the ROC as it has no issues with calling the church Macedonian.
The Macedonian Orthodox Church has been in schism with the rest of Orthodoxy since 1967 when it illegally split from the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Serbian Orthodox Church considered the eparchies in today’s North Macedonia part of the Serbian church. In 2022, after decades of keeping the Macedonian church question as exclusively an internal Serbian church matter, this frozen conflict came close to resolution. On the backdrop of some important political changes, namely Skopje and Athens resetting their relationship and becoming more amicable with the signing of the Prespa agreement in 2018, the Ecumenical Patriarch decided to return the Macedonian church into regularity (communion with the rest of the Orthodoxy). In the communique from 9 May 2022, Bartholomew asked the SOC and the MOC-OA to resolve outstanding administrative matters. The EP had decided to recognise the Macedonian church headed by Archbishop Stefan (Veljanovski) as “Ohrid Archbishopric” and limit its operations to the territory of North Macedonia, therefore affecting the MOC-OA’s diaspora abroad.
Shortly after, the SOC issued its own Tomos for autocephaly (June 2022) and recognised the MOC-OA as autocephalous, to the surprise of many because of the lighting speed of the decision. The Ecumenical Patriarch’s decision to return the MOC-OA into regularity and not yet grant autocephaly should be seen as an in-between step to full autocephaly with obvious caveats (asking for a name change and managing the diaspora transfer to the EP). This grey area was picked up quickly by the Russian Orthodox Church, which, shortly after the issue of the Serbian Tomos, recognised the Macedonian Orthodox Church in its full name without any conditions or mention of its diaspora churches. During 2022 and 2023, several other local churches also recognised the MOC-OA, with a variance of degree regarding the church's name. However, not one of those recognitions has come from the Greek-speaking churches.
The relationship with Ukrainian Orthodoxy has never received as much attention in the MOC-OA as in the past couple of years. In the midst of the war in Ukraine (March 2023), the OCU’s head, Epifaniy, sent a letter to the Head of the MOC-OA Abp. Stefan asking him for a joint concelebration as a signal for joint recognition. The MOC-OA synod responded swiftly, rejecting the appeal. Last month, the MOC-OA spokesperson Met. Timotej declared OCU’s clergy “uncanonical and ordained without grace.”
The recognition of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was never a formal criterion for the MOC-OA’s autocephaly path. The EP never publicly asked for this, nor is it stated anywhere in its decision from May 2022, when it returned MOC-OA into canonicity. However, Met. Timotej revealed that in February 2024, the recognition of the OCU was the only problem stopping the MOC-OA from receiving autocephaly.
The EP would, without any doubt, like to see one more local church added to the list of churches recognising OCU’s autocephaly. Despite the war in Ukraine generating much international sympathy for the Ukrainian people, none of the other churches have recognised OCU’s autocephaly, apart from the Church of Greece, Cyprus and the Patriarchate of Alexandria, which did so in 2019.
By dragging the OCU recognition question into the mix, it is possible that the MOC-OA wants to build better negotiation terms in relation to the main headache for everyone involved, which is the naming of the Macedonian Orthodox Church.
Perhaps the MOC-OA is using the recognition of the OCU as a counter in exchange for more favourable terms over the church's naming. This may include using a so-called double formula: a) MOC-OA for domestic purposes and Ohrid Archbishopric externally or b) MOC-OA with those churches who already recognise it as such and OA with the Greek-speaking churches.
For the Russian Orthodox Church, the name issue is non-existent, and it uses the adjective Macedonian with no problems in regular communication. This is perceived positively by the MOC-OA and society in North Macedonia.
Unsurprisingly, the relationship between the MOC-OA and the ROC has increased exponentially since 2022, when the ROC recognised MOC-OA autocephaly. A high-profile visit of the head of the ROC Department of External Church Relations Met. Antony in January 2023 took place. By staying close to the ROC, the MOC-OA wants to safeguard the (limited) success it has received with the Tomos issued by the Serbian Orthodox Church. The closeness between the two churches doesn’t cost MOC-OA anything politically in Skopje, as the biggest worry for the Macedonian public is the church's naming, which the ROC doesn’t consider problematic.
However, the pressure from the SDSM-led government, including the country's President, Stevo Pendarovski, has prevented even greater closeness between the ROC and the MOC-OA. The fraternity between the two has brought the possibility of increased security risks to the country. In 2023, both North Macedonia and Bulgaria barred the Russian Archimandrite Vassian (Zmeyev) from entry due to espionage concerns. At the time, Zmeyev was the rector of the Patriarchal Metochion in Sofia. He had been visiting the MOC-OA regularly. In this context, North Macedonia’s President Pendarovski made a stark comment the same year that there are members of the MOC-OA’s Holy Synod who have been working with Russian intelligence. Unlike the security services in the Baltics or the Nordic countries, nothing has been done in relation to this in Skopje.
Depending on the results of the elections, the pressure for recognition of the OCU might still continue or diminish altogether. It would be unrealistic to expect that the MOC-OA’s newly formed commission on Ukrainian autocephaly would come to any decision before the elections. If VMRO-DPMNE scores a double win at the presidential and general elections this spring with Hristijan Mickovski as Prime Minister and Gordana Siljanovska Davkova as President of North Macedonia, the MOC-OA will lean even more eastwards. The state will lift the gates for greater Russian influence as North Macedonia’s EU ambitions have stalled, and the MOC-OA will become a much greater ally to the ROC. In such a scenario, the Ukrainian church’s recognition will most likely be put under the carpet. The only source of pressure that will remain will be the Ecumenical Patriarch.
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Andreja Bogdanovski
Read last week’s Ortho. politics round-up:
