A group of Bulgarian deputies sent a verification request to the prosecutor’s office.
“During the inspection it will be necessary to determine the facts and circumstances related to the ownership and the right to use both the land and the building of the Orthodox church,” said deputy city prosecutor and press secretary of the department Hristo Krastev.
The Bulgarian media have already published documents according to which the land on which the Russian church was built was donated to the diplomatic mission of the Russian Empire by the Sofia City Council in 1882. In this regard, an easement title was issued (corresponding to modern notarization and registration of property rights). A check by the Bulgarian registration agency showed that the Russian embassy has a certificate of ownership of the church.
However, the Bulgarian Ministry of Justice criticized the fact that the registration agency is not competent to make decisions on acts that are more than a century old. And furthermore, they allowed themselves to doubt that the current Russian embassy is the legal successor of the diplomatic mission of Tsarist Russia.
Let us remember that the scandal surrounding the Russian Church arose after on September 21 the rector of the metochion in Sofia, Archimandrite Vassian (Zmeev), and two ministers of his church were summoned to the Bulgarian immigration service and received the order to leave the country. within 24 hours, supposedly because they pose a threat to national security.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova called this a blatantly hostile act.
The Russian Orthodox Church protested against the expulsion of its clergy. The temple remains closed, although the Bulgarian Patriarch Neophytos has appointed priests to hold religious services there.
