By Iordan Georgiev, Editor-in-Chief of Doxologia Infonews
The historic visit of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to the borders of our Orthodox Church and the concelebrated Patriarchal Divine Liturgy at the Holy Rila Monastery became a clear litmus test for the spiritual state of our society. They brought to the surface not merely political passions, but profound spiritual illiteracy, a schism within hearts, and above all—a shocking, all-consuming hypocrisy.
On one side of this ugly coin stood those whom we can without hesitation call „Christian-Taliban,“ Pharisees, and religious degenerates, whose activities are heavily subsidized by Russian federation. The provocation at the Rila Monastery—where a self-proclaimed provocateur dared to shout „Anathema,“ without even understanding the sacred meaning of the word, when it is applied, and why—is the pinnacle of absurdity. This occurred at the exact moment when Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew commemorated the name of Metropolitan Epiphanius of Kyiv in his Diptychs, reading them before the faithful during the Patriarchal Divine Liturgy.
This individual is a clear product of a specific, yet unfortunately loud, stratum among the believers in our country—a conglomerate of former communists, State Security agents, people who have passed through various sects, and who have turned into devout worshippers of Russia. The National Protection Service (NSO) officers escorted the provocateur out, but their actions in this situation were entirely inadequate. This subject should not have merely been removed, but immediately handed over to the police and detained, as he committed clear verbal aggression and an unacceptable provocation against a global religious leader inside an Orthodox sanctuary. Orthodoxy is not anarchy, but reverence, canonical order, and love.
On the other side of the same coin, however, an equally repulsive phenomenon emerged: the wave of laudatory articles and tirades, born of pure opportunistic sycophancy, which we have been observing in recent days. Suddenly, Facebook and the media were flooded with texts by professors, public figures, and internet „maniacs“ racing to ingratiate themselves with the figure of the Ecumenical Patriarch. These fair-weather „defenders“ went so far as to exploit the memory of saints, ripping their words out of context to prove what they had once said about Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, how he was the true chosen one, and other such cheap arguments.
I ask these modern Pharisees and sycophants: according to your wretched logic, if some elder years ago had said something negative about Patriarch Bartholomew and was subsequently canonized as a saint, would you still support His All-Holiness today? Of course not! Because you are hypocrites. You love neither the Church nor the Ecumenical Patriarch. You are simply seeking his attention and approval because right now, he is the powerful figure of the day!
The absurdity of this servility is rotten to the core. The truth is, if you truly loved Patriarch Bartholomew, you would unconditionally believe in the Sacred Canons, the centuries-old tradition of the Church, and above all, the Holy Trinity. It was the Eternal God, in His providence, who pointed out and elected the then-Metropolitan Elder of Chalcedon (previously Metropolitan of Philadelphia) Bartholomew as the 270th Archbishop of Constantinople — New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch. On November 2, 1991, he was enthroned upon the Ecumenical Throne by divine will and allowance, not by the power of human flattery.
Since Christ Himself stands behind Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, he has no need for your human protection, pathetic tirades, and empty words! If all these sycophants truly believed in Christ with all their hearts, they would have unwavering trust in the Church and its conciliar choice—that it was precisely the Elder of Chalcedon, Bartholomew, who was meant to shoulder the heavy cross of the Ecumenical ministry.
I, as an Orthodox Christian who believes in Christ with all my heart and soul and has full trust in the Church and its choice, have no need for human beings to tell me who the Ecumenical Patriarch is—whether he is canonical or whether he is a „heretic“ and „servant of the devil,“ as the fanatics scream. Both sides in this artificial dispute represent the exact same pernicious phenomenon. Those who hate him, and those who outwardly defend and flatter him for personal gain, are driven by the same source—the enemy of mankind, the Devil. Everything else is empty talk.
I address you directly, dear sycophants, who 2, 3, 5, or 8 years ago publicly insulted the Ecumenical Patriarch and blamed him over Ukraine: how is it that suddenly, overnight, you woke up as his most ardent defenders? Until a week ago, the very same you were writing articles about how the monasteries in Northern Greece were not Greek and how the Bulgarian occupying forces from the First and Second World Wars simply took the religious relics from there „to save them“ from the Orthodox Greeks. What madness! Today, driven by opportunity, you write the exact opposite. Why don’t you go and say these foolish words right to the face of the Ecumenical Patriarch? You cannot and will not do it, because you are Pharisees—exactly the same as those who revile him from the pulpit of foreign geopolitical interests.
Unfortunately, in Bulgaria, the vast majority of Christians are theologically illiterate, ignorant, and uneducated. Even the theology professors in our academic circles are below criticism—truly not all, but this intellectual and spiritual decline is no longer a rare phenomenon. When deep rooting in Holy Tradition is absent, its place is taken by fanaticism or servility.
His All-Holiness is often accused by retrograde circles of being an „ecumenist,“ injecting malice and condemnation into this word. But our Church itself, by its very nature, is ecumenical (universal)! Christ Himself was an „ecumenist“ in the true, deep sense of the word—because His saving love embraces the whole world. Christ does not divide people into categories, into ours and theirs. This is precisely what Patriarch Bartholomew does in his ecumenical pastoral ministry—he preaches unity. Modernists, on the other hand, praise him, trying to claim him as their own reformer. But Patriarch Bartholomew is not a modernist. He strictly upholds the canonical ecclesiastical centuries-old tradition, but refracts it exclusively through the prism of Christ’s love.
Stop, dear sycophants! Stop using the Ecumenical Throne for personal PR and opportunistic games. The Mother Church has no need for fake concern and Pharisaic tirades. She needs pure hearts, faithfulness to the Sacred Canons, and a living, experienced faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything else is of the evil one.
It is even an understatement to write: All-worthy! Πανάξιος!