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Macedonian Church Gets Entangled in 'Name' Dispute
As Athens and Skopje move closer towards solving their dispute over Macedonia's name, Macedonia’s Orthodox Church and Prime Minister have denied agreeing that the church should change its name as well
The dispute between Greece and Macedonia over the country's name has now involved Macedonia's main faith group, the Macedonian Orthodox Church, MPC.
A row started on Wednesday following reports that the Church and Prime Minister Zoran Zaev had written to the global leader of Christian Orthodoxy, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, asking it to help the unrecognised Macedonian Church end its ecclesiastical isolation, and agreeing to remove the term “Macedonian” from its name.
“No one in the MPC will give it up, nor has he ever demanded it give up its constitutional name, of the Macedonian Orthodox Church - Archdiocese of Ohrid,” Bishop Timotej, the Church spokesperson, told the media on Thursday.
"It is a matter for the Greek [and other] churches to decide how to address us, but we are both the Macedonian Orthodox Church and Archdiocese of Ohrid," Bishop Timotej clarified.
On Wednesday, the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in a press release said it had considered the request of the MPC and the Macedonian Prime Minister for help in solving the Church's status under the name "Archdiocese of Ohrid", and was willing to act.
The Synod said it had decided to act on “the request of the breakaway church in Skopje, supported by a letter from the Prime Minister of FYROM [Macedonia’s provisional UN reference], Zoran Zaev, for the Ecumenical Patriarchate to take the initiative to return the Church within the [Orthodox] canonical framework under the name Archdiocese of Ohrid”.
The influential Greek Orthodox webpage Romfea added to the confusion by saying that the MPC and Zaev had actually demanded that the adjective "Macedonian" be removed from the MPC's name, so that it could be recognised by the rest of the Orthodox world.
Macedonia's government on Thursday confirmed only that Zaev had sent a request for help to Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. However, “the request sent to the Patriarch did not ask for the scrapping of the word ‘Macedonian’”, the government added.
The Macedonian Church remains unrecognised by other Orthodox Churches due to a long-lasting dispute over its ecclesiastical independence from the Serbian Orthodox Church, to which it was formerly united.
The two churches have remain locked in conflict over the right of the Macedonian Church to be accepted as an equal to the other Orthodox churches.
The Serbian Church, which has close ties with other Orthodox churches, has blocked recognition of the Macedonian Church ever since it unilaterally declared "autocephaly", or ecclesiastical independence, in the 1960s.
The confusion over the MPC's name and status happens at a sensitive time, politically, after both Greece and Macedonia said they were in the final stages of solving their long-standing dispute over Macedonia's name – to which Greece objects.
That would then allow Macedonia to unlock its stalled bids to join the EU and NATO.
Greece has blocked Macedonia’s Euro-Atlantic path for years, demanding that the country change its name. Greece insists that use of the name "Macedonia" implicates territorial claims to its own northern province of the same name.
Despite opposition to a compromise from right wingers in both countries, the two Prime Ministers, Zaev and Greece’s Alexis Tsipras, are expected to hold a telephone conversation on Thursday or Friday to close all remaining issues – after which the two are expected to reveal a new agreed name for Macedonia
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