The present article appeared yesterday on Religion in Praxis. Reprinted with permission.
Patriarch Porfirije of the Serbian Orthodox Church (left foreground) and Archbishop Stefan of the Macedonian Orthodox Church (right foreground) concelebrate the Divine Liturgy at the cathedral church in Skopje. (From the website of the Serbian Orthodox Church.)
How can a conflict that appeared to be unsolvable for over half a century gets to be resolved in less than a month? What has changed in the perception among the hierarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) to greenlight and unanimously back the autocephaly request of the Macedonian Orthodox Church-Ohrid Archbishopric (MOC-OA)? These are the questions that we would not get clear answers today as the process leading to today’s historic decision to grant autocephaly to the MOC-OA by the Serbian Orthodox Church has been kept in secret and far from the public. While the pace of developments has been astonishingly fast, the political context in which this decision was taken may serve as a pointer to some of the answers to the questions above. Read More