Sofia, December 12, 2024
Photo: bg-patriarshia.bg
This coming weekend, a new vicar bishop for the Bulgarian Orthodox Diocese of the USA, Canada, and Australia will be consecrated in Sofia.
At its session on October 10, the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church approved the request of His Eminence Metropolitan Joseph to nominate and consecrate Archimandrite Kliment (Strakhilov), 50, an Athonite monk, as his vicar, the Bulgarian Church reports.
Fr. Kliment will be consecrated on Sunday, December 15, at the Patriarchal St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia, receiving the title of Bishop of Levski.
Met. Joseph’s previous vicar is the current Patriarch, His Holiness Daniil, who served in America from 2010 to 2018, when he was recalled to Bulgaria to serve as Metropolitan of Vidin.
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Archimandrite Kliment was born in Sofia in 1974.
He graduated with highest honors from the German High School in Sofia in 1993. In subsequent years, he continued his education at the University of Osnabrück, Germany, simultaneously completing two majors—Macroeconomics and European Studies. He completed his master’s degree at the University of Birmingham, UK. In 2005, he defended his doctorate in Florence at the prestigious European University Institute (EUI) and received his doctorate in Economics. He completed internships at several banks, including the central banks of Germany and Canada.
From 2005, he was a senior assistant in the Economics Faculty of the European College in Bruges, Belgium. From 2007, after winning the competition for European civil servant, he was appointed as an economist in the Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs (ECFIN) of the European Commission in Brussels, which position he left to enter as a novice at the Zografou Monastery on Mount Athos in November 2009.
After three years as a novice, on the feast of the Lord’s Entry into Jerusalem, he was tonsured as a monk with the name Kliment, in honor of St. Kliment of Ohrid, with his spiritual elder Archimandrite Ambrose as his sponsor. In October 2021, on the feast of the 26 Zografou Martyrs, he was ordained as a deacon, and the following day as a hieromonk by the then Metropolitan of Vidin, now Bulgarian Patriarch Daniil.
Along with his monastic obediences in the church, monastery kitchen, and the oil press, he translates Orthodox literature (he knows Greek, Russian, and several Western languages), and has published several liturgical books and psaltic collections.
In 2016, he graduated from the Theological Faculties in Sofia and Thessaloniki and participates in scientific conferences. By decision of the Bulgarian Holy Synod, he transferred to serve in the Bulgarian Diocese of the USA, Canada, and Australia and was appointed as protosingel of the diocese.
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