CYPRUS: Mysterious Ways

Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus is both spiritual leader of 500,000 Greek Cypriots and President of the island's Greek-Turkish secular government. Lately, his problems have been mostly temporal, as the Greek government in Athens pressured him with humiliating ultimatums in an effort to either throttle his power or force him out of office (TIME, Feb. 28). Last week, for a change, the archbishop was experiencing ecclesiastical complications. At the annual synod of the Cypriot hierarchy, three bishops invoked a canon law—unused for at least a hundred years—forbidding bishops to hold church and state posts simultaneously. They moved that Makarios resign the presidency.

The bishops' action was curiously delayed; it has been more than twelve years, after all, since the bearded ethnarch was first elected President. Suspecting with good reason that the Greek government had put the bishops up to their protest, Cypriot Greeks responded riotously. In Paphos, capital of the district where Makarios was born, scores of cassocked priests seized the office of Gennadios, one of the three bishops involved, and declared that they were no longer loyal to him. Gennadios had wisely stayed in the bishopric of Kitium in Limassol as a guest of Bishop Anthimos. But there too, crowds beat at the doors of Anthimos' residence, screaming "Out with the traitor bishops!" In Nicosia, meanwhile, 100,000 people gathered outside Makarios' episcopal palace (he also has a presidential palace) to roar the archbishop's name and praises; it was the biggest such assembly since Makarios returned to Cyprus from British-imposed exile in 1959, and His Beatitude was suitably moved. "I will do my utmost to prove worthy of this love," he told the crowd.

The synod can force Makarios out as archbishop, although this would be dangerously unpopular. By making a show of his popularity, Makarios adroitly underscored the point that any overt attempt to topple him would raise the possibility of civil war.