SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Patriarch Neophyte of Bulgaria, who was the first elected head of the Orthodox Church in the post-communist Balkan country, died at a hospital in Sofia. He was 78.

Surrounded by mountains in the heart of the Balkans, Sofia’s strategic location made it a focus for invasion over the centuries.

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church is the sole representative of the country’s traditional Eastern Orthodox Christianity and it alone may can use the term “Orthodox” in its name, Bulgaria’s ...