Sadlier Oxford Vocabulary Level E Answers Unit 4

The Maronites of Cyprus, an endangered treasure

from the site:

Maronite Youth in traditional dress.

By Fady NOUN old Maronite peasant attend Saturday's meeting with Pope Benedict XVI the Catholic communities of Cyprus. They are accustomed to the sun and come from villages with singsong names: Aya Marina, Courmagiti, or Assomatos Carpasha. Villages they were expelled in 1974, 35 years ago, when the invasion of the island by the Turkish army.

The Pope himself who requested that they be seated prominently. The ceremony was largely their destiny. Catholics in Cyprus today, they are first. Certainly, there is also an island in the Latino community related to the Custody of the Holy Land and composed mainly of expatriates and foreign workers. But the two minorities in this country largely Orthodox, the most fragile, most threatened, one that really needs to be rescued is the Maronite community, numbering a few thousand people.

Concern brought to the small Maronite community of Cyprus that irresistibly recalls that John Paul II has shown towards Lebanon. One has the impression that through them the Church Universal wants to save an endangered model. Because there is a real risk of losing the Maronites Cyprus. Driven from their villages, families responded differently to the tragedy. In the villages themselves, the time has stopped. Some former remained, wild, but from another age. Some families who fled their land after languishing, their homes and their churches. The younger generation, she has adapted to this misfortune, and began to look elsewhere.

According to MP Antonis Hagi Russos, representing the Parliament of the Maronite community in Cyprus, 80% of marriages of young Maronites are now "mixed" marriages, so that the next generation, these people will be assimilated to the Greek Cypriot population, or contaminated by the ambient secularism, losing all sense of identity Maronite. The member gave the pope a silver plate on which are inlaid with the names of the Maronite villages in Turkish area, in which he expresses the desire of the people "to reconnect with his roots."

Pope thought he could promise the concrete Maronite Cypriots who cheered Saturday. "I know your desires and sufferings, he told them. I hope that with the assistance of the authorities concerned a life better you will be provided soon. "Where does such an assurance, no one can tell.

course, thanks to the energetic action of Archbishop Boutros Gemayel, now replaced his bishop for having reached the age limit, the Maronite community seems to have recovered. On intensive diplomatic efforts led the Turkish authorities to relax the conditions for villagers' access to their land, so that in three of these, Masses are celebrated again on Sunday. Moreover, some old stayed behind were able to exploit their new land and crops Olive is assured. Not for Aya Marina, interrupt the people involved. This village, in fact, is considered a military zone, and all houses are occupied by Turkish troops.

However, this remedy for healthy he was, must continue to become irreversible. This task is now Bishop Yussef Soueif, successor to Bishop Gemayel, omnipresent during welcoming ceremonies of the Pope. "Failing to return to the village, the village need to send young," says Maria Koikkonnou, a Maronite of Cyprus engaged in preparations the visit.

In other words, the younger generation must be won back to the values of the village, that is to say evangelized again. Hence perhaps the crucial importance that the Pope has given during his visit, priests, consecrated persons and Christian educators. In the homily during Mass in the Chapel of the Holy Cross, he urged them to remain faithful to the Cross of Christ, to be models of consistency face of adversity, even if it means, in some cases, give their lives. "Imagine what the world would be without the Cross?" he told them. The question, indeed, has something to shake.

In the courtyard of the white-hot primary school Maronite, after the speeches and exchanged presents, pictures of village life, beautifully danced and sung, have, by their creativity and sincerity, to forget the sun.

St. Maron, the hermit of the fourth century became the father of a human community of some 7 million people spread around the world, built his first church on the site of a pagan temple. That is, it seems, the fate of the Maronite community: gradually replace the light of the Gospel into the darkness of superstition, even when the light is soft and comes in the guise of the most humane, the simplest joys.