Former Bulgarian tsar and prime minister from 2001 to 2005, Simeon II of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, hosted the Russian Metropolitan Antony and the Russian ambassador Eleonora Mitrofanova in his dwelling on Tuesday night.
The photographs had been revealed within the Moscow Patriarchate together with a brief message: “Metropolitan Antony of Volokolamsk warmly welcomed Simeon II of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha on behalf of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, noting his exceptional contribution to preserving the unity of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and strengthening its place in Bulgarian society, in addition to the private contribution of the Head of the Royal Home of Bulgaria in strengthening the relations between the Russian and Bulgarian Orthodox Church buildings.”
The Russian Embassy in Bulgaria and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha’s private web site didn’t announce the go to.
Earlier that day, dozens of Bulgarians and Ukrainians protested in entrance of the doorway of the Russian church in Sofia due to Antony’s go to. Protesters blocked the doorway to the temple whereas the Russian priest, Mitrofanova and former deputy prime minister Rumen Petkov had been inside.
In one of many photographs from the assembly, the previous tsar poses with Russian clergymen and Mitrofanova subsequent to the portrait of his father, the late Tsar Boris III. The royal dynasty in Bulgaria was liquidated 78 years in the past after Bulgaria’s occupation by the USSR’s troops. A part of the royal household was massacred, and one other managed to flee overseas.
The Moscow Patriarchate introduced that Antony is in Bulgaria on the event of the seventieth anniversary of the creation of the department of the Russian Orthodox Church in Bulgaria.
A month after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha gave an interview to the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita, wherein he paraphrased the phrases of his father, Tsar Boris III: “All the time with Germany, by no means towards Russia.”
“There are two issues we can’t change: historical past and our location on the map,” stated Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and known as on the Bulgarians: “All the time with Europe, by no means towards Russia.”
In the identical interview, he defined that it’s regular for Russia’s governance to be “just a little extra authoritarian” as a result of it’s a very massive nation.
Bulgaria turned a member of NATO whereas Simeon was prime minister in 2004, and three years later turned a member of the EU.
(Krassen Nikolov | EURACTIV.bg)
