Dositej Stojkovski

Statue of Dositejs II in front of St. Kliment's Church in Skopje .

Dositej II. ( Maz . Доситеј II, real name: Dimitrija Stojkovski), (born December 7, 1906 in Mavrovo ; † May 20, 1981 in Skopje ), was Archbishop of Ohrid from 1958 until his death and the first head of the Macedonian Orthodox Church . He called himself Dostej II because he saw himself in the continuity of the archbishops of Ohrid, who had administered this metropolis until the 18th century. Under his leadership, the Orthodox Macedonians broke away from their Serbian mother church in 1967 and unilaterally declared autocephaly .

Before his elevation to Archbishop of Ohrid, Dositej was Bishop of Toplice, a titular eparchy belonging to the Serbian Orthodox Church . The second Macedonian National Council elected him Archbishop of Ohrid in October 1958. At the same time, the Macedonian Autonomous Church was founded and its statute was adopted. The Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church described the election of Dositej as uncanonical and hesitated to recognize the new archbishop. But in 1959 Patriarch German came to Macedonia and together with Dositej consecrated a new bishop for one of the Macedonian eparchies. In 1964 Dositej visited Bulgaria with German.

Nonetheless, relations between the Serbian and Macedonian Churches remained tense, and in 1967 the Macedonians declared autocephaly at their 3rd National Council. Dositej was now a schismatic for the Serbs . The Ohrid Archbishop devoted his further term of office to the expansion of the ecclesiastical structures of the independent Macedonian Church. At the same time he tried to get his church recognized by the other Orthodox churches. He was unsuccessful because of the Serbian resistance.

literature

• Done Ilievski: Arhiepiskop ohridski i makedonski Dositej . Skopje 1995 ISBN 9989-48-035-4