Dear Sisters and Brothers of Bulgaria!

With God’s help, in a few days, I will be among you. To come to Bulgaria will be for me and for my collaborators a pilgrimage in the sign of faith, of unity and of peace.

In fact, your land is homeland of witnesses of the faith, since the time in which the Holy Brothers Cyril and Methodius sowed the Gospel there: a fruitful sowing, which has borne abundant fruits also in difficult periods of the last century. Saint John Paul II repeated it often, who so spent himself so that Europe would recover Christ’s liberating strength; and also so that it could take up again and breathe with its two lungs. In his footsteps, I will have the joy to meet His Holiness the Patriarch and the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. Together we will manifest the will to follow the Lord Jesus on the path of communion among all Christians, Pope Francis said in his video message to the people of Bulgaria ahead of his visit to Bulgaria.

It takes only one look to make distinctions between this and the address to the Macedonian people ahead of his visit to Skopje. And, it can be seen that the Holy Brothers Cyril and Methodius are mentioned only in the address to the Bulgarian people, but not in the address to the Macedonian people.

Simply, Pope Francis “erased” the brothers Cyril and Methodius from Macedonia or North Macedonia, as he writes, and wrote them down in Bulgaria. Although Thessaloniki brothers, according to him, sowed the Gospel there, in Bulgaria, but not in North Macedonia. And, he does not even mention ancient, Greek or whatever you want call Macedonia.