Bulgarian Patriarchate Bishops were Spying on Foreigners, Other Clergy
If you think these were just “clergy getting state clearances”, think again.
(Sofia Echo) The senior clergy of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church named as having worked for the country’s communist-era State Security did not file denunciations of lay people but gathered information about what was going on within the church and wrote denunciations of other senior clergy.
This emerged in an interview given by Ekaterina Boncheva of the Dossier Commission to television station bTV on January 18 2012, a day after the commission disclosed that 11 out of 15 of the church’s metropolitans had been agents of State Security.
The metropolitans were involved with the Sixth Department of State Security, which was responsible for acting against “political subversion”.
Boncheva said that the clerics’ co-operation had been voluntary and there was no evidence of subversion, while she added that priests had been aware that by co-operating with State Security, their chances of career advancement were enhanced. In one case a member of the clergy was paid for his services but this was not common practice, she said.
The reports turned into the communist state’s secret service covered characteristics of colleagues and also had passed on information about representatives of the Greek and Macedonian churches.
Clergy serving abroad had passed on information about emigres.
