The Bulgarian Orthodox Church on Sunday elected Daniil Vidin (Atanas Nikolov), the 52-year-old metropolitan as its new leader in a vote.
A total of 138 out of 140 participants in the council voted. Daniel secured the support of 69 of them. Metropolitan Grigory of Vratsa received the votes of 66 delegates. Three more ballots were declared invalid.
Unlike his late predecessor, Daniil sided with the Moscow Patriarchate in its dispute with the Ecumenical Patriarch over the independence of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
Daniil succeeded the soft-speaking and charismatic Patriarch Neophyte, who passed away in March aged 78 after leading the church for 11 years.
A church procession accompanied the newly elected patriarch to the cathedral, where he was enthroned in a sumptuous ceremony, attended by other Orthodox church representatives as well as Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians.
Bartholomew is considered first among equals among Eastern Orthodox patriarchs, which gives him prominence but not the power of a Catholic pope. Large portions of the Eastern Orthodox world are self-governing under their own patriarchs.
The election of the Bulgarian patriarch was of great significance in light of the issue of the Ukrainian schism. In December 2018, then-Metropolitan Daniil called non-canonical the “unification council” of the schismatics, from which the new “church” emerged. He has repeatedly spoken in support of the canonical UOC and criticised the intervention of ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.
Although the church in Bulgaria is completely separate from the state, its constitution calls Eastern Orthodoxy the “traditional religion,” which is adhered to by about 85 per cent of its 6.5 million people.
