Sofia's Court of Appeal yesterday (January 4, 2011) denied to hand over Serbian Orthodox priest Jovan Vranisovski to Macedonia, according to today's Sofia Morning News website. Vranisovski was arrested in Bulgaria on November 17, 2010 based on an international police order.
The detainee's 40-day term of arrest expired on December 28, 2010. He has an active two-and-one-half-year sentence in Macedonia for abuse of church money estimated at EUR 250,000, which is why he left that country. The abuse allegedly occurred between 1998 and 2002.
Vranisovski had formerly acted as a cleric in Macedonia, but presented himself as the Exarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Macedonia; however, the Macedonian Orthodox Church split from the Serbian Orthodox Church in 1967 and is not recognized by it as a separate ecclesiastical entity.
The Serbian Orthodox Church regards the self-proclaimed Macedonian Church as schismatic and sees its territory as falling under its Ohrid Archbishopric.
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