After the death of Ioannicius in January, an election for his successor was already held once, which the Synod canceled without explanation, and this also led to protests.
The Holy Synod decided that Metropolitan John of Varna and Veliky Preslav will be the temporary deputy of the widowed Sliven see, and he must also organize a diocesan election for a new metropolitan on May 19. This will be done according to the old rules.
Then the Holy Synod came out with a final decision to hold the new elections according to the old rules, and before that a financial and property audit must be done.
The electoral rolls should be checked by name and whether the parishioners who participated in the election have the right to vote. The decision was reached after a protest and a counter-protest, which took place in front of the Synod building.
Prof. dbn Dilyan Nikolchev, professor of canon law at the Faculty of Theology of SU and a lawyer, commented on the complaint and the report, because of which the elections for Sliven Metropolitan were canceled on his Facebook page:
“I am reading the complaint and the report, because of which the elections for Sliven Metropolitan were canceled. From my experience in the field of law, I generally believe that these are false accusations, misleading and completely fabricated. There is no legitimate evidence to support the accusations – everything is presented in the form of hypotheses.
In one of the documents (“report”), the author cites Art. 171, para. 22 (in fact, it is not a paragraph, but a point) of the UBOC-BP, trying through the content of this text to draw attention to the allegedly guilty behavior of ep. Hierotei: that he did not manage the Pomorie Monastery in good faith. Obviously St. The Synod took into account what was written by the author of the same report in order to cash in the elections for the Metropolitan of Sliven, without taking into account the legal circumstance that, regardless of whether what was written in this document is true or not, not only St. The Synod, as well as all church bodies, do not have the competence, powers and tools to reach conclusions from which to establish that such administrative violations have been committed. Only the law enforcement and judicial authorities of the Republic of Bulgaria have such competence and powers.
In addition, the author of the same text does not realize that citing Art. 171, item 22, and specifically its part about the “Central Register of Immovable Properties of the Holy Synod”, in fact directly attacks (and correctly) St. Synod that he did not implement a decision of the Sixth Central Committee, according to which such a register should (should) have been created (a long time ago). Just to remind you that during the voting of this same decision by the aforementioned assembly, a metropolitan who disagreed with it, left the assembly with the delegates of his ward diocese, for which he was punished by the Church People’s Assembly.
The well-known jurist and lawyer Ivan Minev, a participant in the last Sixth Church Council, briefly commented on what was written by Prof. Dilyan Nikolchev as follows:
Christianity.bg:
“I fully agree with the findings and conclusions, because the so-called accusations have the legal form of a denunciation and nothing more, which is within the competence of the prosecution. It is well known that a register has not been created, despite the decision of the Sixth Council and non-implementation of the Statute. The lack of reasons for ranking the selection is also a violation of the Statute”.
FrogNews
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