WHAT do the English king Charles I and a Roman Catholic School in Nicosia have in common?
They share the year 1646 as an anniversary. For at the same time as Charles finally squandered his throne, the Terra Santa School started operating in Nicosia.
Not surprising, then, that one of the greatest achievements of the island’s oldest school is its age.
Of all the many important figures that have graduated from the school in its more than 350 year history, two relatively recent ones show just how diverse graduates have been. Famous mentalist Uri Geller was among the school’s graduates in the 1960s, while House President Marios Garoyian graduated in the 1970s.
Sitting down for a chat with Andreas Skotinos – member of the school’s Board of Directors – and Sister Veronica, it soon becomes clear that the Terra Santa is of vast historical importance to the island. Not just because of its age – it has never stopped operating since it first opened its doors – but because of its multicultural and non-discriminative nature.
“Sister Veronica equals Terra Santa,” said Skotinos as we began our chat, explaining that she is the school’s longest-serving member having started working there in 1971. “She is our oldest serving member, and our dearest.”
Being around Sister Veronica, this is soon made clear, as she naturally breeds feelings of warmth and trust. Something she is keen to transfer onto her pupils and their parents.
“We need to breed trust, as parents entrust us with their children,” she explained. “And they do trust us, as we embrace their children with love and affection, which is very important for their parents and for us. It makes us feel good that they bestow that kind of trust on us.”
The Terra Santa School in Nicosia was established by the Jerusalem-based Custody of the Holy Land of the Franciscan Order, as part of the Order’s plan to promote education for Christians in the broader Middle Eastern region in the 1640s.
“The school was created during efforts to deal with the obscurantism of the Ottoman era, which didn’t give Christians the opportunity to get an education,” Skotinos explained. “This doesn’t necessarily mean there was conflict with the Muslim religion, but because they didn’t offer Christian children the chance to an education, the Franciscan monks decided to create schools in the broad Middle Eastern area.”
The school initially operated as a primary school for boys only and was located where the Ledra Palace checkpoint is today. It was then transported to the centre of the capital, at the Holy Cross Church near Paphos Gate.
It started operating in its current premises in Acropolis in 1956. There were also Terra Santa schools in Limassol and Larnaca, but they eventually closed down.
In 1913, the school started offering secondary education and by 1971, the nursery school was up and running. Later that year, the school started operating on a mixed gender basis.
“The school’s motto is Virtus, Studium et Creatio (Virtue, Studiousness and Creativity); this indicates the whole philosophy by which the school was founded,” said Skotinos. “Initially, when the school was first created, the philosophy of the Franciscan monks was the first two words and slowly, slowly we added the third word, as we felt it better represented our school.”
Multiculturalism and acceptance of other religions – even though the Terra Santa was founded as a strict Catholic school – is of great importance to its operators.
Sister Veronica explained, “The school has always accepted children of all races and religions. Initially there were many Turkish Cypriots, Armenians, as well as Greek Cypriot Orthodox children, and Maronites. So it has always been a multicultural school, there were never eras when it was just Catholics, despite the fact that the school was officially founded under the guidance of the Catholics.”
The school also wished to serve children of all classes, which is why it offers scholarships giving poorer children the chance of an education.
In Religious Studies, the school teaches Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. However, pupils’ parents have the right to request an exemption for their children, if they are of different religions.
According to the Sister, the school has never been subjected to intercommunal hostility even though it continued schooling Turkish Cypriot pupils after the1974 Turkish invasion.
“There were never any such issues, even directly after the invasion,” she said. In fact, the school offered shelter to over 400 refugees in July 1974. “When the invasion took place we opened the school to the displaced and refugees; the entire school – classrooms, the kitchen, all our materials,” said Sister Veronica. “There were 430 refugees all under the same roof. For us, the sisters and teaching staff, we kept our rooms and gave the rest up to the refugees. When they left, we gave them everything; beds, kitchen utensils, everything.”
Up until 1983, the school also worked as a boarding school catering for around 130 primary and secondary schoolchildren. “Apart from Turkish Cypriot children, we had children from Africa, Australia, England; pupils whose parents lived abroad and wanted their children to have an education,” said Sister Veronica.
Pupils pay a small amount of fees, purely to cover the school’s operational costs. If anything else is needed financially, it is covered by the Franciscan order. For example, two new football courts were sponsored by the Order recently.
“Our school’s aim was never to make profits,” Skotinos explained. “We never act in a way that would compete with other schools. Schools are not profit-making organisations. Our aim is to see how we can help children with their education and form principles and values.”
SIDEBAR
ONE of the Terra Santa School’s least mainstream students must surely be the internationally known mentalist Uri Geller. Geller, who is Jewish and graduated from the school in 1963.
He had arrived on the island with his mother when he was just 11 and has described his time in Cyprus as “the time of my life”.
On arrival at Larnaca’s Customs, Geller was forced to take on a new name. According to the mentalist in his book Magician or Mystic?, “The officer looked at my name Uri, and he said Uri in Russian is Yuri, and that is actually George. So on the spot, they wrote down George and that was my name at school for the next seven years.”
Geller recently put on a show for the school’s pupils, after being invited by the Sisters.
