None of Religion's Business

Novinite Insider » EDITORIAL | January 26, 2007, Friday // 00:00
Bulgaria: None of Religion's Business Photo by Yuliana Nikolova (Sofia Photo Agency)

By Milena Hristova

My mom and dad used to call me a princess, but recent events show it is high time that I picked a much more prestigious "title". Titles, after all, have always been an important thing. During the communist times it was a really big deal if you were an engineer, lawyer, director of a directorate or an honored artist, so that you could put a title before your name.

The tradition has been revived, together with a virtually dead for the Orthodox world title - the archon. A businessman, known best for his striptease club, was conferred in Rome the title for his "contribution to the church and humankind welfare". The Vatican envoy interfered and this brought the apparently religious scandal down to the laymen's world of politicians.

Bulgaria will surely not benefit from blowing up the scandal, but it is scandalizing enough to speak for itself.

It speaks of the chaos that reigns in the Bulgarian church, its business-like operations that split it into two synods and left it with none in the end.

Money and avidity for real estate properties have been at the bottom of the smouldering and now and then exploding disagreements in the Bulgarian church. What clergymen actually do is take even further the degrading process in the "holy" institution, which was first started by the state itself decades ago. As they get smarter and smarter, better acquainted with obsolete and non-Orthodox titles and... corruption practices.

The question remains what a businessman could benefit from being crowned an archon. All the more so if he has paid BGN 300, 000 to get it...

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