Cypriot Maronites look forward to papal visit
In the coffee shop at this farming village on the northern Cyprus coast, the conversation jumps from one hardship to the next: a bad rainy season, a religion weakened by assimilation, and a division of the island that has lasted 36 years with no end in sight.
For Cyprus' Maronites, followers of one of the oldest Catholic faiths, the best news of late has been the announcement that Pope Benedict XVI is coming to Cyprus next week — the first pontiff to visit the island.
Kormakitis is one of four northern villages that were once the center of Cyprus' Maronite population. Then, in 1974, came a coup, a war and a fence that split the Mediterranean island into a Turkish Cypriot north and a Greek Cypriot south.
Most of the Maronites were forced to head south, and Kormakitis today has just 130 people, most of them old-age pensioners.
Joseph Katsioloudis, a retired 63-year-old headmaster, echoes the fear of many Maronites that with the latest round of reunification talks having produced no visible breakthrough, they will not live to see their island and community reunited.
"Without a Cyprus settlement, we're lost — 100 percent," he says, sitting in the coffee shop while his friend, 70-year-old farmer and lay cantor named Ioannis Tsioutzoukis, introduces a visitor to Maronite ways by chanting a prayer in Arabic....
Read entire article at AP
For Cyprus' Maronites, followers of one of the oldest Catholic faiths, the best news of late has been the announcement that Pope Benedict XVI is coming to Cyprus next week — the first pontiff to visit the island.
Kormakitis is one of four northern villages that were once the center of Cyprus' Maronite population. Then, in 1974, came a coup, a war and a fence that split the Mediterranean island into a Turkish Cypriot north and a Greek Cypriot south.
Most of the Maronites were forced to head south, and Kormakitis today has just 130 people, most of them old-age pensioners.
Joseph Katsioloudis, a retired 63-year-old headmaster, echoes the fear of many Maronites that with the latest round of reunification talks having produced no visible breakthrough, they will not live to see their island and community reunited.
"Without a Cyprus settlement, we're lost — 100 percent," he says, sitting in the coffee shop while his friend, 70-year-old farmer and lay cantor named Ioannis Tsioutzoukis, introduces a visitor to Maronite ways by chanting a prayer in Arabic....