After a year of litigation, the Sofia Court of Appeal has opened proceedings for the liquidation and deletion of the Bulgarian Orthodox Old-Style Church from the register of religious denominations. This comes a few months after the Sofia City Court refused to terminate its registration.
Now, the three-member panel of the Sofia Court of Appeal refers to the changes adopted at the beginning of the year in the Law on Religious Denominations. They were made at the insistence of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, which saw in this entry a danger of a new schism among the Orthodox community. The BOC received the support of the government and the president, as well as the support of the parliamentary parties GERB, “Vazrazhdane” and Bulgarian Orthodox Church. According to the changes made, no religious denomination except the Bulgarian Orthodox Church – Bulgarian Patriarchate can contain the word “Orthodox” or its derivatives in its name. The denominations were given two months to change their names and statutes to comply with the law. The Bulgarian Orthodox Old-Style Church has not taken such steps, and now the court has granted the request of the Sofia City Prosecutor’s Office and the Directorate of Religious Denominations of the Council of Ministers to have it removed from the register of religious denominations.
The legal saga began in late December, when the Supreme Court of Cassation allowed the entry of the Bulgarian Orthodox Old-Style Church into the register of religious denominations, citing a decision of the European Court of Human Rights. A year later, Bulgarian legislation removed the Old-Style Church, which has 18 churches and followers throughout the country. The decision of the Sofia Court of Appeal is final and cannot be appealed.
No such measures were taken with regard to the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church, which is registered in our country under that name as a religious institution with ten more local branches in the country. However, a reference in Bulstat shows that on October 1, 2025, the central denomination in Sofia changed its name and it is now “Armenian Apostolic Holy Church in Bulgaria”. Several of the local branches also made such a change in the previous month, such as the “Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church of Surp Agop in Yambol” from September 11, 2025, which is now listed in the register as “Armenian Apostolic Holy Church of Surp Agop”.
