Bulgarian Bishop Daniil: "Unification Council" is non-canonical

Metropolitan Daniil of Vidin

The Archbishop of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Daniil of Vidin, said in an interview posted on the official resource of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church that the “Unification Council”, convened in violation of the canonical order and involving people outside the Church, would not cure the schism among the believers in Ukraine but would deepen it.

The Bulgarian bishop commented on the “Unification Council”, held in Kiev on December 15, as follows: “I will say in the words of one of the archbishops of the canonical Church, with which he responded to the invitation of Patriarch Bartholomew to attend this assembly: “I firmly believe and confess that I remain faithful to the One Orthodox Church, and my presence at this council is contrary to the first psalm of David, which says: “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked.”

Also, Metropolitan Daniil said that he considered the initiative to create an autocephalous Church to be exclusively a political project.

“Who are those who insist on autocephaly? State power in the first place. And as Metropolitan Onufry rightly notes, the authorities hear the voices of only those groups that set fire to churches, profess nationalism, call for hatred, shout ‘Death to Muscovites!’. Why are only their voices and demands for autocephaly heard?” Metropolitan Daniil wonders. “Why is the opinion of the only recognized canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church not taken into account? What is the point of listening to groups whose leaders are devoid of spiritual sanity and excommunicated from the Church?”

According to the hierarch of the Bulgarian Church, in “the current troubled situation there is a comforting thing — the desire of Orthodox people in Ukraine to preserve the unity of the Holy Orthodox Church. And it finds response and support across the Orthodox world”.

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