On a central square in the Bulgarian capital, where Sofia's homeless fill plastic water bottles from a public fountain, icons and a large wooden cross form a crude, improvised altar.
In a packing crate nearby votive candles are shielded from the wind by plastic sheeting, while members of a rag-tag congregation sit on peeling, white-painted park benches serving as pews.
Dozens of bearded figures in the traditional black robes of the Orthodox church move among them. But around his neck each wears a rope tied into a hangman's noose.
These are the ministers of dissent in Bulgaria, the clerics of one of Europe's most bitter recent schisms, fighting a battle at the crossroads of theology and politics which has divided the Orthodox church.
Their tumbledown, open-air church, which has a handful of worshippers, lies in the shadow of Sofia's celebrated Alexander Nevski cathedral, home to Bulgarian Orthodoxy's spiritual leader, Patriarch Maxim. Up to 7,000 people can pray under the cathedral's magnificent, many-domed roof. But only yards from where Patriarch Maxim is followed by the masses as a guide to heaven the dissident priests damn his name as the path to hell.
Only months ago the rebel priests had their own magnificent churches to preach in. But in late July police flanked by state prosecutors arrived to evict them. Images of priests and old women being dragged from 250 church premises by burly, armed policemen flashed round Bulgaria, sparking outrage.
"I have been the priest in my church for 10 years," said Fr Demeter Kutzev, who officiated at Uspenie Bogorodichno church in Cheplare, 140 miles south east of Sofia. "I was serving 8am Mass and after a couple of hours I noticed that no worshippers were coming."
When he had finished Mass he found dozens of police outside. "I was pushed in the back of a police car and driven away. I had just said Mass and then suddenly it was like I was a Mafia boss." A showdown in Bulgaria's theological turf war has been brewing since the collapse of Communism in 1990. The new democratic government sought to replace Communist appointed figureheads, including Patriarch Maxim.
"They tried to change the leaders of all state structures from the courts, the police to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, which could mobilise 6,000,000 believers in Bulgaria," said Ivan Zhelev, the current government's director of religious affairs.
"But because of the division between church and state they had to organise a putsch from within the church."
The clerical coup saw Patriarch Maxim denounced as a Communist stooge, not a man of God, and a breakaway synod formed. But Maxim refused to bow to the rebels, who were never recognised by Bulgarian law, and the schism began.
The two synods have existed side by side ever since, with the dissidents, now under the leadership of Metropolitan Inokentiy, claiming to have rallied 30 per cent of the country's 1,000 priests to their cause.
After 12 years of dispute, a court recently ruled decisively in Patriarch Maxim's favour and the police stepped in.
"I was Maxim's chief of cabinet, so the rebels see me as the enemy," said Mr Zhelev.
"But we appealed to them several times to rejoin the church, and it was only the last resort to ask the prosecutor and police to get the church properties back."
Meanwhile, opposite the Alexander Nevski cathedral, in front of the now locked doors of what was once "their" Saint Sofia church, the rebel priests have established the headquarters of their campaign against the "Red Patriarch".
There, as celebrants sit through Mass on the benches, they plot their next move in an army tent. On trees nearby they have pinned posters featuring the "anti-Christ" Maxim wearing the Communist red star.
Around the country similar tents have become homes to the ministers of Bulgaria's unorthodox orthodoxy.
Now it seems the Bulgarian patriarch has won a victory against his religious rivals. But they and their followers promise to endure, churches or no churches.