Skopje, October 8, 2024
Photo: mpc-spe.mk
On Sunday October 6, the Sunday of All Macedonian Saints, the Macedonian Orthodox Church-Ohrid Archbishopric celebrated the 25th anniversary of the enthronement of His Beatitude Archbishop Stefan of Ohrid as primate of the Church.
On the occasion, the Archbishop celebrated the Divine Liturgy at St. Clement of Ohrid Cathedral in Skopje, together with 11 hierarchs and clergy of the MOC and, reports liturgija.mk.
Following the service, His Beatitude presented the new 6th and 7th volumes of Words on the Word, a collection of his sermons. He spoke about theologizing as the most authentic form of glorifying God, but also about the diverse character of the sermons in the books.
A festive banquet followed at the Marriott Hotel.
Notably, it was during Abp. Stefan’s reign that the MOC’s 55-year schism from the other Local Orthodox Churches was healed and it received autocephaly.
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Photo: mpc-spe.mk
The Archbishop’s biography from the site of the Skopje Diocese:
Stefan, the Archbishop of Ohrid and Macedonia and Justiniana Prima, was born on May 1, 1955, in the village of Dobruševa, Bitola Province, as Stojan (Veljanovski), in an Orthodox Macedonian family, as the sixth child of his pious parents Tale and Stojanka.
After finishing elementary school, in the autumn of 1969, he enrolled in the St. Clement of Ohrid Macedonian Orthodox Seminary in Dračevo, Skopje, which he successfully completed in 1974, and then studied at the Belgrade Orthodox Faculty.
After graduating in 1979, the Holy Synod of Bishops of the Macedonian Orthodox Church appointed him as a professor at the St. Clement of Ohrid Macedonian Orthodox Seminary, and the following year he was sent for postgraduate studies at the St. Nicohlas Ecumenical-Patrological Institute in Bari, Italy, where he earned his master’s degree in 1982.
Upon returning from Italy, he was appointed as a lecturer at the St. Clement of Ohrid Orthodox Theological Faculty in Skopje, teaching Old Testament and Patrology, a duty from which he was elected as a hierarch of the Macedonian Orthodox Church.
He was tonsured as a monk on July 3, 1986, at St. Naum of Ohrid Monastery in Ohrid, consecrated as a bishop on July 12, 1986, in St. Demetrius Church in Skopje, as Metropolitan of Zletovo and Strumica, and after the division of the diocese, he was appointed Metropolitan of the Bregalnica Diocese, based in Štip.
In the following years, in addition to his work at the Orthodox Theological Faculty, he was the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Church Life, and also served as the rector of the Macedonian Orthodox Seminary in Skopje from 1991 to 1999, and as spokesperson for the Holy Synod of Bishops.
At the Church-People’s Assembly held on October 9, 1999, in the St. Sophia Cathedral of the ancient Ohrid Archbishopric in Ohrid, he was elected, and on October 10, 1999, enthroned as the fifth primate of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, and since then he has been serving as the Archbishop of Ohrid and Macedonia and Justiniana Prima, while simultaneously being the ruling hierarch of the Skopje Diocese.
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