PLANS to allow cremations in Cyprus are unlikely to get beyond the drawing board if the Church has its way, as a Bishop yesterday slammed the practice as alien and unorthodox.
Speaking before a meeting of the House Interior Affairs Committee, Bishop Vassilios of Trimithounta said the Church disagreed with cremation on theological and traditional grounds.
Vassilios said that in the West, the practice of cremation had been introduced for financial and psychological reasons.
“They wanted to wipe death out of their lives,” he said.
“We, the Orthodox, wish, if possible to bury our dead in our homes,” Vasilios added.
He said the proposal to introduce cremation meant introducing a foreign custom into local traditions through the back door.
“It is a shame for modern civilisations to want to make their dead disappear, people who gave to this world and are not even given a burial place,” Vassilios said.
But DIKO deputy Marios Matsakis suggested that cremation should be offered to those who wanted it, arguing it was everyone’s democratic right to choose how their body would be treated after death.
Matsakis said there was huge interest from neighbouring countries Egypt and Israel to bring bodies to Cyprus for cremation.
Legislation Commissioner George Stavrinakis said the state was looking into the whole issue, but said the government was not too keen on turning Cyprus into a regional cremation centre.
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.
