Apart from the canonical ones, the “Macedonian Orthodox Church” also has serious historical reasons for its non-recognition by the Local Orthodox Churches, writes Hristo Temelski, a Bulgarian historian, director of the Church-Historical and Archival Institute under the Bulgarian Patriarchate.

“As a state, Macedonia never existed until the end of the Second World War. History does not know a separate Macedonian ethnos until the end of World War II, when by a state decree the Bulgarian population living in this area for centuries was not declared “Macedonian”. It goes without saying that there was no Macedonian church until the end of World War II.

Today’s Macedonian Orthodox Church has nothing in common and has never been the heiress and successor of the Ohrid Bulgarian Archdiocese, created by Byzantium for its political purposes, for the assimilation of the Bulgarian population in Macedonia. In some periods, its diocese entered either Bulgaria, then Byzantium, then Serbia, and at the end – into the Ottoman Empire, in order to be liquidated in 1767 by its creator – the Ecumenical Constantinople Patriarchate. And the fact that the lands of today’s Republic of Macedonia were once part of the diocese of the Ohrid Archdiocese does not give any right to the continuity of the modern Macedonian Orthodox Church, ”the historian writes.