Jasmitha excited to meet the Pontiff

OUTSIDE the small Paphos church all eyes turned towards one young girl as she arrived with her parents and entered the chapel yesterday.

Jasmitha Marharajasingh a courageous ten-year-old Sri Lankan girl from Paphos has survived a brain tumour and heart surgery. Kathleen Houliotis, a former teacher of Jasmitha, and the child’s godmother started the fundraising campaign to get Jasmitha the life-saving treatment she needed. She had asked the child’s religious instruction teacher to write to the Pope to request his blessing. The family received a telephone call from the Vatican earlier this week inviting Jasmitha to receive a personal blessing. As she entered the small church yesterday, she told the Cyprus Mail: “I’m feeling very excited and I couldn’t really sleep last night. I am very lucky to be meeting him and I will say thank you for his blessing.” Jasmitha was wearing a new outfit for the occasion.

Inside the church the Marharajasingh family all received the Pontiff’s personal blessing.

Sathiya told the Cyprus Mail after the Pope’s departure: “We kissed the Pope’s hands and he blessed us with the sign of the cross. All three of us were crying, it was the most amazing feeling and you would have to pinch all of us because we can’t believe what just happened to us.”

According to her mother, Jasmitha, who usually has much to say for herself, was so stunned by the whole experience that she could only say three times to the Pope: “Thank you Your Holiness.”

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.