In 1967 the Macedonian Orthodox Church declared itself autocephalous, choosing the six hundredth anniversary of the abolition of the medieval Archbishopric of Ohrid to do it. No other Orthodox church accepted the declaration, including the Serbian Orthodox Church from which it had separated, and the result was that a body serving the great majority of a country's population spent fifty five years outside communion with the rest of Orthodoxy.
The practical consequences of that status are worth spelling out, because they are easy to underestimate. Its clergy could not concelebrate with clergy of any other Orthodox church. Its sacraments were not recognised. Its faithful travelling abroad could not communicate in an ordinary parish. It could not attend pan Orthodox gatherings. And the dispute was entangled throughout with the separate and equally long argument between Skopje and Athens over the name of the country itself.
The resolution came quickly once it came. In May 2022 the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople accepted the church into communion under the name the Archbishopric of Ohrid, restoring the medieval title and sidestepping the contested national adjective. The Serbian Orthodox Church, the mother church in the dispute, concelebrated with it in Belgrade and then recognised its autocephaly. Other churches followed.
The case is instructive about how Orthodox jurisdiction actually works. Autocephaly is not something a synod can simply assert; it is a status conferred by recognition, and the currency of that recognition is the willingness of other bishops to stand at the same altar. Fifty five years is how long the refusal lasted, and a change of name is what unlocked it.