An Open Letter to Patriarch Bartholomew

 

TO HIS ALL-HOLINESS BARTHOLOMEW I, ARCHBISHOP OF CONSTANTINOPLE – NEW ROME AND ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH

AN OPEN SORROWFUL EPISTLE from the clergy, monastics, and laity of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church – Bulgarian Patriarchate, regarding Your forthcoming visit to the Holy Monastery of Rila

Your All-Holiness, 

We address You driven not by worldly enmity or human bias, but moved by profound spiritual sorrow. This sorrow overtakes our hearts as we behold how the Ecumenical Throne, which was once a pillar of Orthodoxy and a defender of the dogmas, has today become a wellspring of scandal and a stumbling block for the entire One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. 

The occasion for this epistle is the widespread information concerning Your forthcoming visit and presiding over the Holy Eucharist in the spiritual heart of Bulgaria—the Holy Monastery of Rila, on October 19, 2026. 

Holy Tradition binds us to guard the purity of the Faith more than our very lives. As the ever-memorable confessor Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky) wrote in his Sorrowful Epistles: "Love which is not conjoined with Truth is not the love of Christ. To keep silent concerning the Truth for the sake of a false peace means to betray God Himself." For this very reason, as faithful children of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, we have no right to remain silent. 

Your All-Holiness, over the past decades, and with particular audacity during the current year of 2026, You have openly and consistently preached teachings that have been anathematized by the Holy Fathers: 

1. You affirm the pan-heresy of ecumenism: In Vilnius (June 8, 2026) and Budapest (September 4, 2026), You preached the condemned “Branch Theory,” speaking of the “agony of divided Christianity.” You referred to holy dogmatic zeal as "sterile confessional entrenchment" and introduced the ruinous concept of "juridical ecumenism," legitimizing Roman Papal delusions and acknowledging a primacy of the Vatican without Rome having offered any repentance whatsoever. 

2. You preach a pernicious religious syncretism: In Istanbul (July 29, 2025), You equated the Divine Revelation with pagan idols and Eastern cults, claiming that the Sacred is expressed equally as “God, Allah, Brahman, or the Luminous Emptiness.” For the Orthodox Church, this is not dialogue, but a grievous blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and a direct trampling of the First Commandment of God. 

3. You tore open the bleeding wound in Ukraine: Your anti-canonical incursion into a foreign jurisdiction in 2019 served as a justification for the most terrible persecution against Orthodoxy in recent history. The blood, the tears, the seized temples, and the hierarchs, clergy, and laity of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church cast into dungeons all weigh heavily upon Your archpastoral conscience. 

We remind You that You are preparing to visit the diocese of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, whose Holy Synod in 2016 conciliarity, categorically, and in a confessional manner rejected the Council of Crete and decreed that "outside the Holy Orthodox Church there are no other churches." Your teaching is in direct and insurmountable dogmatic collision with the confessional stance of our native Church. 

The Holy Eucharist is the Sacrament of perfect unity of mind in the Faith. We cannot pronounce the sacred exclamation "Let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess..." together with a hierarch who preaches the destruction of the dogmas. 

Therefore, following the example of the thousands of faithful clergy and laity in Georgia in 1997, and standing firmly upon the 15th Canon of the First-Second (Constantinopolitan) Council, we declare the following: 

We, the Orthodox clergy, monastics, and laity of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, refuse to accept prayerful and eucharistic communion with a primate who publicly preaches heresy. Your presiding over the Holy Liturgy on the feast day of St. John of Rila is spiritually and canonically unacceptable to us. 

We call upon You to exercise prudence and to cancel Your visit to the Holy Monastery of Rila. Do not turn the brightest all-Bulgarian feast into an occasion for scandal, schism, and public unrest. Do not violate the spiritual conscience of the Bulgarian ecclesiastical fullness, which is resolved to keep the Testament of St. John of Rila and to not allow "the evil wolf to trouble the peaceful flock of Christ." 

We believe that our refusal to concelebrate with You is the highest form of true Christian love, for only strict reproof can awaken the conscience. With this sorrowful yet firm love, we pray that the All-Merciful God will enlighten Your heart, grant You a spirit of sincere repentance, and restore You to the bosom of uncorrupted Patristic Orthodoxy. 

Until then, however, Your presence before the holy altars of Bulgaria is a stumbling block that we shall not permit. 

Clergy, monastics, and laity of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church – Bulgarian Patriarchate 

September 23, 2026 

Sofia, Bulgaria 

 

Source (Greek and English): https://entoytwnika1.blogspot.com/2026/09/blog-post_24.html