BECAUSE THERE’S MORE TO US…
LIFE OUTSIDE TOURISM;
OTHER INTERESTS
IN CYPRUS
The country of Cyprus
is like a family that never
has time to be together
because they are always
entertaining guests,
and the identity of the
country can sometimes
be lost in all of this.
C
yprus welcomes as many as 15 million tourists every year,
who come to engrave a piece of the beautiful and endowed
island in their memory, before taking off to another place
worth committing to memory. With all these tourists and so
much focus on the beaches and wonders Cyprus has to offer, it can be
very easy to forget that there is more to the gorgeous island, than just
UNESCO World Heritage sites and Blue Flag beaches.
We look at a few things the locals and people are passionate about.
Religion
Cypriots are a very religious people, devoted Christians to the Ortho-
dox church in particular. Christianity came to Cyprus in around AD45,
brought by Apostle Lazarus, who is the Patron Saint of the Church of
Lazarus in Larnaca, and Barnabas, who was the Cypriot Jew and was
with the apostle Paul on many of his missions. Apostle Barnabas is
cited in the Bible in Acts 4:36 and Acts 14:14. A good number of the
stories in the Bible happen to have taken place in Cyprus. Evidence
from tombs and the age long buildings scattered all over the country
tell their stories. The most important church in Cyprus is the Church of
Cyprus, which is an autocephalous Greek Orthodox church, and one
of the oldest. Close to 80% of the Cypriot population are of Orthodox
faith, while the remaining portion is either Sunni Muslim, Protestant,
Catholic, Armenian Apostolic, and even Buddhist.
Cyprus is also the location for some of the most remarkable stories
and relics of Greek mythology, with none bigger than the famed Mount
Olympus, which was the lair of the gods of Greece.
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