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THE ghost of communism has resurfaced in Bulgaria, with 11 of the country's 15 top bishops exposed as former secret police agents, shaking the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and its image just as it readies to choose a new patriarch.
A list published by the parliamentary archives committee has singled out 97-year-old Patriarch Maxim and three other bishops as the only members of the church's top authority, the Holy Synod, not to have collaborated.
The other 11 were listed as agents of the most notorious part of the Darzhavna Sigurnost, the political police who spied on people for suspected "anti-communist behaviour".
The archives law does not entail any legal consequences for the former agents, but Prime Minister Boyko Borisov was quick to declare himself shocked.
Meanwhile, a handful of priests from southwest Bulgaria slammed their leaders in a declaration on Friday and urged them to resign.
For Kalin Yanakiev, a philosophy professor at Sofia University and editor-in-chief of the religious magazine Christianity and Culture, the church was a victim of Darzhavna Sigurnost, which "picked up, nurtured, promoted and appointed the bishops".
"Bishops are for life; they cannot resign," he told Bulgarian national television. But he urged the clerics to repent.
A list published by the parliamentary archives committee has singled out 97-year-old Patriarch Maxim and three other bishops as the only members of the church's top authority, the Holy Synod, not to have collaborated.
The other 11 were listed as agents of the most notorious part of the Darzhavna Sigurnost, the political police who spied on people for suspected "anti-communist behaviour".
The archives law does not entail any legal consequences for the former agents, but Prime Minister Boyko Borisov was quick to declare himself shocked.
Meanwhile, a handful of priests from southwest Bulgaria slammed their leaders in a declaration on Friday and urged them to resign.
For Kalin Yanakiev, a philosophy professor at Sofia University and editor-in-chief of the religious magazine Christianity and Culture, the church was a victim of Darzhavna Sigurnost, which "picked up, nurtured, promoted and appointed the bishops".
"Bishops are for life; they cannot resign," he told Bulgarian national television. But he urged the clerics to repent.
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