No one ever seems to see the same Archbishop Makarios, President of Cyprus. Those who have been involved in diplomatic negotiations find him baffling, enigmatic, and often infuriating. The 500,000 Greek Cypriots of his island home revere him as a guileless saint, a selfless patriot, and a tenderhearted humanitarian. The 100,000 Turkish Cypriots, a minority terrified of racial extinction, view him as a bloody-handed monster and "the devil of duplicity incarnate."
The man stirring up these contradictory emotions is a mystical prelate who leads an ascetic personal life. About the only ornament in his bedroom is an icon of Christ on the cross, and his combined salaries as President and archbishop ($21,280) go to charities. Makarios is so compelling a public speaker that Cypriots flock to hear his sermons, described as "full of poetry and light and love."
Blessed Monk. Esthete Makarios comes of earthy origins. He was born Michael Mouskos in 1913 in the coastal village of Panayia. His father, a typical gnarled and baggy-trousered peasant, recalls that he was a "bad goatherd," and thought him rather stupid. Not so the abbot of Kykko monastery, who was attracted by young Michael's intelligence when the boy became a novice at the age of 13; he later took the name Makarios, which means "blessed." By entering Kykko, which was founded eight centuries ago high in the Troodos Mountains, and is today the wealthiest monastery in Cyprus with assets estimated at $56 million, Makarios was joining the "black," or celibate, clergy as opposed to the "white" Greek Orthodox priests who may marry, but who seldom rise far in the hierarchy and cannot become bishops.
Makarios was studying law and theology at the University of Athens when Greece was overrun by the Nazis. He showed his fierce patriotism and his taste for intrigue by becoming a member of the Greek resistance. In 1946, on a scholarship from the World Council of Churches, he studied theology at Boston University until called home to become a bishop.
The Orthodox Church of Cyprus has for centuries led the Greek community politically as well as spiritually. Makarios at once plunged into the enosis movement, calling for union of Cyprus with Greece, and staged an island-wide plebiscite in which Greek Cypriots voted 97% for enosis. In 1950 Makarios was elected Archbishop of Cyprus and simultaneously became Ethnarch, that is, leader of his people. He founded a militant youth group, which grew into the terrorist EOKA, and fought a savage four-year struggle against the British garrison. Arrested and exiled to the remote Seychelles Islands for a year, Makarios returned in triumph in 1959.