Current phenomenon of anti-Catholicism can be seen on social networks where the Orthodox beliefs of Macedonian citizens are being manipulated. Such promotion of anti-Catholicism comes either from the neighborhood or from Russia and that can clearly be seen from the rhetoric used in such attacks. Although Macedonians are mainly Orthodox, anti-Catholicism has no tradition in North Macedonia. Ottoman Macedonia suffered quite a lot from the Orthodox Church propaganda of its neighbors, which was assimilatory, and in the past, some found salvation from it in cooperation with the Vatican, which still exists today.
Author: Vangel Bashevski
There is now a newly composed form of anti-Catholicism on social networks, which has no real historical basis in North Macedonia, nor any tradition, and it is occasionally imported from abroad, but also from further away, from Russia, where hostility toward the Vatican is more pronounced. There are posts on social media that exude anti-Catholic rhetoric, peppered with Kremlin propaganda, conspiracy theories, historical distortions and the like.
Examples from social networks
The politician Ljupcho Palevski (who was then suspected of murder) has called for the cleaning of Macedonian Orthodox Church from foreign installations, that serve the Vatican (Satan) – as he expressed himself. It is also claimed that it was a “CIA setup”, to discredit the visit of the head of the Russian MFA, Sergey Lavrov, to the OSCE summit which was held in Skopje. That visit was controversial because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and according to the post, it was a war of the satanic Vatican against Russia.
This next post locates such installations in The Monastery of Saint Jovan Bigorski, and according to it, they have hidden the truth that Jesus was the son of Cleopatra and the heir of the Macedonian Kingdom and that the Vatican insidiously replaced the word Macedonians with Jews, in the Bible.
Lucifer is sung about in Vatican Masses – as claimed by another post, that strongly rejects ecumenism (cooperation between different Christian denominations) and equates it with Satanism. The target of that post is also the head of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, who is being criticized for positively evaluating the cooperation with the Vatican and for allegedly wanting to include the Macedonian believers into that “satanic church”.
He is also criticized for calling the Vatican-the Holy See, which shouldn’t be holy for him, thus showing that he is an “antichrist”. The author’s comments on the post argue this using Serbian nationalist sources. When it comes to thrones, one posts questions if it is Christian for the Pope to sit on a throne of gold (which is untrue), while children around the world are starving, however, the revolt of the post is aimed only toward the Pope, and not the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, who, for example, also lives lavishly.
Some posts (here and here) convey that Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova spoke about a possible concordat (special agreement) with the Vatican. It is perfectly legitimate to question whether it is wise and whether it will give the Vatican many privileges in our country (exemption from taxation, from criminal investigations, etc.), but these publications incorrectly claim that it will mean catholicisation or Uniatism of the followers of the MOC. The majority of countries with a dominant Orthodox Christian population have signed concordats: Russia (in 1818 and 1847), Montenegro (in 1886), Serbia (in 1914) and Romania (in 1927) and they have all stayed that way to this day.
For context, Uniates are former Orthodox, who entered a union with the Vatican, accepting some of its rules and accepting the Pope as an authority, but preserving some of their specifics.
Historical overview
In 1054 the Great Schism occurred between Western Roman Catholicism (centered in the Vatican, where the Latin language dominated) and Eastern Orthodoxy (centered in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, Byzantium, where the Greek language dominated). That led to hatred, wars, forced religious conversions, etc.
In 1182, the Orthodox inhabitants of Constantinople (mainly Greeks) massacred their fellow Catholics (mainly merchants and sailors from Genoa and Pisa), and in 1204, Catholic Crusaders, the Franks, massacred the Orthodox inhabitants of the city.
Anti-Catholicism is still present among Greek Orthodox fanatics and each attempt at peace with the Vatican is met with a hostile reception. An example of that is a group of monks from Mount Athos, who launched the slogan „Ὀρθοδοξία ἤ θάνατος“ (Orthodoxy or Death) in the 1970s.
Such fanaticism also existed in Tsarist Russia, with the slogan: „Православие, самодержавие, народность“. In the 19th century, the so-called Slavophilia movement appeared there and Slavophiles launched narratives about the “rotten West” which is Catholic or Protestant and as such is “spiritless”. They called for Slavic unity, but not as a union of equal people, rather as a union in which the Russian Tsar and the Russian Orthodox Church will dominate.
The intolerance between the Russian Orthodox Church and Catholicism expresses itself in the Russo-Polish wars. In the territories under Polish rule, many of the Orthodox became Uniates, and after that, fell under Russian rule, which brought them back to Orthodoxy.
After Poland and Lithuania fell under Russian rule, Catholics there were discriminated against, some of their temples were demolished or converted to Orthodox and new ones were built, some of which were demolished by Poland after it gained independence in 1918. Although Russia signed a concordat with the Vatican, the relationship was not good.
Anti-Catholicism is also present among Serbs. Dushan’s Code (1349) predicted the forced return to Orthodoxy of those who converted to Latin heresy (Catholicism) and “Azimstvo” (communion with unleavened bread typical of Catholicism). Saint Sava, on the other hand, condemned Catholics as “barbarian ignoramuses” in his Nomocanon of 1219.
In 1937 protests by the Serbian Orthodox Church against the signing of the concordat with the Vatican erupted in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which led to riots.
That intolerance expressed itself in the Serbo-Croatian conflict, and the Ustasha regime carried out not only massacres of the Serbs, but also their forced conversion to Catholicism.
However, things were not so simple. The Ustashi were not against Orthodoxy as a whole, but against the Serbian Orthodox Church, against which they created the Croatian Orthodox Church, which assimilated the Serbs into Orthodox Croats. In the 19th century, a national movement developed in Dubrovnik, whose members considered themselves Serb-Catholics. It’s all confusing and controversial, but in general, Serbs are Orthodox and Croats are Catholic, and that religious difference plays a big role in that crash.
Catholicism is not as represented in our country, so such a crash could not have happened, and Ottoman Macedonia suffered more from the propaganda of neighboring Orthodox churches.
In accordance with Byzantine traditions and the Ottoman millet system, the Ecumenical Patriarchate considered all of its followers as “Greeks”, regardless of their actual ethnic origin, and carried out their assimilation through its schools. Among those “Greeks” there later was a nationalist awakening, so revivalists like the Miladinov brothers and Grigor Prlichev appeared, who advocated for ecclesiastical and educational independence.
Some saw a solution to this in escaping the Patriarchate and in forming a union with the Vatican, and that happened in Kukush in 1859. According to Orthodox dogmas, Uniatism is practically betrayal-as assessed by the Greek archpriest and theologian Prof. George Metallinos, but it was more important for the people to preserve their ethnic identity rather than their religious one.
Those contacts with the Vatican continued after the establishment of SR Macedonia and the MOC. That meant visits to the grave of St Cyril in the Vatican, cultural and scientific cooperation, and in addition, the Society of Writers of Macedonia declared Pope John Paul II as its honorary member. All of that can be read in the monography “In Honor of Saints Cyril and Methodius” written by the philologist Vera Stojchevska-Antic and the journalist Slave Nikolovski-Katin.
Many things have changed since 1054. In 1964 there was an attempt to overcome the Schism between Catholicism and Orthodoxy between Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I and in 2001 Pope John Paul II apologized for the massacre in Constantinople in 1204, but some do not know or accept this.
Now there is an opportunity to normalize the relationship between the MOC and the Ecumenical Patriarchate (which is not ideal, but it is a step forward), but that also received a hostile reception, so we are reminded of the fact that it was not in our favor before. However, in the recent past, the relationship with the Vatican has also been improved, so according to the principle of “guilt by association”, the Vatican will also be blamed for the sins against us, which is unreasonable. It is a mess of facts and “facts”, whose point seems to be that there is no normalization, the Ukrainian and Macedonian churches are forever in limbo, tensions are eternal and so on.
