Around 2000 Bulgarians are set to celebrate Saturday in Istanbul to mark the 150th anniversary of “Bulgarian Easter” which led to the restoration of an independent Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

Bishop Sioniy will celebrate alongside the Bulgarians, some of whom are arriving on specially organized buses to join the Easter services in churches across the Turkish city.

On April 3 1860 Ilarion Makariopolski refused to mention the Greek Patriarch’s name in an Easter service. This led to the struggle between the Bulgarians, led by Neofit Bozveli and Makariopolski, and the Greeks intensifying throughout the 1860s. By the end of the decade, Bulgarian bishoprics had expelled most of the Greek clerics, thus the whole of northern Bulgaria, as well as the northern parts of Thrace and Macedonia had effectively seceded from the Patriarchate.

The Ottoman government restored the Bulgarian Patriarchate under the name of "Bulgarian Exarchate" by a decree (firman) of the Sultan promulgated on February 28, 1870. The original Exarchate extended over present-day northern Bulgaria (Moesia), Thrace without the Vilayet of Adrianople, as well as over north-eastern Macedonia.

After the Christian population of the bishoprics of Skopje and Ohrid voted in 1874 overwhelmingly in favour of joining the Exarchate (Skopje by 91%, Ohrid by 97%), the Bulgarian Exarchate became in control of the whole of Vardar and Pirin Macedonia. The Bulgarian Exarchate was partially represented in southern Macedonia and the Vilayet of Adrianople by vicars. Thus, the borders of the Exarchate included all Bulgarian districts in the Ottoman Empire.