WHILE AN eighth century icon continues to shed `tears’ in a small Limassol district church, the Bishop of Paphos has dismissed any possibility of a miracle and directed an attack against his Limassol counterpart.
Arakapas village priest father Dimitrios Panayiotou told the Cyprus Mail that while the icon periodically stopped crying its tears “fell like a river” at other times and had continued yesterday.
Panayiotou also said the village had received an influx of visitors praying before the icon since the phenomenon began on Christmas Day. “It is something too important for our human minds to comprehend,” he said.
Panayiotou was the first to spot it during preparation for a Christmas morning service while Limassol Bishop Athanasios declined to comment on the icon saying that God loved mankind and would not try to scare people.
He visited the site earlier this week.
However, Paphos Bishop Chrysostomos on Thursday said the faithful should not believe such phenomena too easily and the miracle might be serving personal interests, “I have heard they are building a new church there.”
When speaking to Ant1 on the icon, he swiftly changed the topic saying the real miracle in his opinion was that the Major Synod, made up of two visiting Patriarchs and over 20 visiting and local bishops, acquitted Athanasios of homosexuality charges in mid November.
He said, “I do not consider (the icon) a major miracle. We had an important miracle a few days ago. The Major Synod’s unanimous decision. That is a miracle if there ever was one.”
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
