Episode 3 of 4

Declaration of Autocephaly

Name: Declaration of Autocephaly
Start: 1872-05-23
Location: Constantinople

When: 23 May 1872
Where: Constantinople
Part of: Bulgarian Exarchate established by Ottoman decree

Antim I declared the Bulgarian Church autocephalous in May 1872, without the Ecumenical Patriarch's blessing.

On 23 May 1872, Antim I and other Bulgarian hierarchs celebrated a liturgy in the closed Bulgarian St. Stephen Church in Constantinople. Following this, Antim I declared the autocephaly of the Bulgarian Church, a de facto status not blessed by the Patriarch.

Sources

Bulgarian Exarchate Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-16

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.