Τhe Slav-speaking “RAINBOW” party asks, in a letter to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, for the Divine Liturgy to be held in the so-called “Macedonian language” of the alleged “minority of ethnic Macedonians in Greece”.
In this letter, relying upon the Prespes Agreement and the new situation created by the recognition of the so-called “Macedonian language”, a comprehensive system of pursuing collective claims regarding the “religious rights of the minority” is put forward for the first time.
In particular, they asked Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to let the Divine Liturgy to be held “in modern Macedonian” in the regions of Greece “where we, Macedonian-speaking Orthodox ethnic Macedonians Greek citizens, live.”
Actually, it is noted that in the past, “Metropolitans in Northern Greece were the first to destroy old Macedonian Orthodox temples with hagiographies and inscriptions in the Cyrillic alphabet.”
In the announcement, the Rainbow argued: “Even today we are victims of the implicit hostility and intolerance of a significant portion of the clergy of the Metropolises of the New Lands.”
They called on the Ecumenical Patriarch to “embrace them with the same fervor that embraces the Greek minority of Constantinople”.
They asked for a meeting with the Ecumenical Patriarch to inform him in which parishes of the Metropolises of the New Lands “Orthodox ethnic Macedonians” live, wishing to hold the Divine Liturgy in the alleged “modern Macedonian language”.
