On February 24, Metropolitan Neofit of Rousse was elected Patriarch of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, as successor to Maxim who had died in November 2012. After a troubled path to the election that exposed bitter infighting in the Synod, Neofit moved to restore a credible position in society for the church, a task not made easier by the controversies that were to follow in 2013, including that around the death of Varna Metropolitan Kiril in July and the initial scandals around the election of a successor to Kiril.