For years since the foundations for the new Church of St. Constantine and Helena in Skopje’s main square were laid in 2012, the area was fenced off, ugly and unpleasant to everyone. Now that the church and the space around it has opened up, everyone has a reason to be satisfied: some because of the return of the public space and Orthodox believers because they have a new cathedral.

The celebratory atmosphere during the late-September opening, however, cast a shadow over how the church even came to be built in the first place. Although the person considered to be the ideologue behind the project, the fugitive authoritarian ex-Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, was not mentioned at the consecration, he spoke out on Facebook and portrayed himself as its creator.

“I am facing one of the deepest existential dilemmas of human existence – the paradox of the creator who is cut off from his creation,” Gruevski wrote from Budapest, where he fled after being sentenced to jail in his home country in 2018.

His post appeared to confirm the longstanding gossip that the idea for the church was personally his. Gruevski said he had always wanted a new monument to replace a religious building that, according to him, was unjustly demolished the year he was born.