The Serbian Orthodox Church named the Macedonian church on its official website as the "Orthodox Ohrid Archbishopric - Macedonian Orthodox Church", or POA-MPC. After public reaction the wording was changed to the constitutional name: Macedonian Orthodox Church - Ohrid Archbishopric, MPC-OA.

Once would have been a mistake. This is not once.

The disputed wording appeared in a text about the international conference "The Legacy of the Desert", held on 4 September at the Manasija monastery in the Branicevo eparchy. It states that the greeting from Archbishop of Ohrid and Macedonia Stefan was delivered by Bishop Kliment of Heraclea, presented as secretary of the Synod of the "Orthodox Ohrid Archbishopric - Macedonian Orthodox Church". Earlier in the same post the wording "Orthodox Macedonian Orthodox Church - Ohrid Archbishopric" also appeared.

Two wrong variants in one text before arriving at the correct one. That is hard to explain by haste.

What makes the case sensitive is not the word order - it is the acronym. Until 2023, POA denoted the Orthodox Ohrid Archbishopric, the church structure led by Jovan Vranishkovski, which was under the jurisdiction of the Serbian church. That structure was integrated into MPC-OA in 2023, and its bishops were received into the canonical jurisdiction of the Macedonian church.

So: the acronym that until 2023 denoted a parallel church structure in Macedonia under Belgrade's jurisdiction now appears glued in front of the name of the autocephalous Macedonian church. Anyone who knows the history reads the difference.

The list of previous "mistakes" is long and it has a pattern. In October 2024, after the joint liturgy of Serbian Patriarch Porfirije and Archbishop Stefan in Nis, the naming "Ohrid Archbishopric - Macedonian Orthodox Church" was used. There have also been cases where Archbishop Stefan was named only as "Archbishop of Ohrid", or as "Archbishop of North Macedonia".

All of them depart from the name under which the Serbian church recognised the Macedonian church as autocephalous in 2022. The same Tomos also contains the recommendation that the name question be resolved with the Greek-speaking and other local Orthodox churches.

The frequency itself is the argument. When one and the same institution uses several different variants of a single name over a period of years, and every one of them is shifted in the same direction - towards something less than MPC-OA - the probability that these are administrative slips becomes small.

The timing is the part that ties all the threads together. Relations between MPC-OA and the Ecumenical Patriarchate have recently shown signs of warming - Bishop Partenij of Antania stayed on Mount Athos, a Macedonian spiritual choir performed Macedonian songs and dances before Patriarch Bartholomew, and announcements of further contacts followed. It is precisely the Ecumenical Patriarchate that has to issue the tomos still missing.

In that context, the renaming from Belgrade is hard to read as administration. It reads more easily as a reminder that autocephaly granted from one place carries expectations towards that place - especially when relations between the Serbian and Russian Orthodox churches on one side, and the Ecumenical Patriarchate on the other, are burdened by larger disputes over influence in the Orthodox world.

There is no formal decision at the Serbian church to change the name, and no explanation of why that acronym was used. Only a correction after a reaction, as on previous occasions. And that is where the real question lies - not for Belgrade, but for Skopje: how many times does the same "mistake" have to repeat before someone at MPC-OA demands a written answer rather than just a correction on a website?