NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Talks between the heads of Cyprus’ Christian and Muslim communities and the leaders of the ethnically split island’s Greek- and Turkish-speaking communities give “great hope” that religion can better contribute to peace, an official said Thursday.
Religion has never been at the root of the Cyprus conflict, said Peter Weiderud, who heads a Swedish Embassy-sponsored program that aims to get Cyprus’ religious leaders more actively engaged in peace-building. But religion and the right to freely worship have become victims of it.
More than 500 churches and monasteries — many hundreds of years old — were left to ruin, looted or converted for other uses in the breakaway Turkish Cypriot north of the island after Turkey invaded in 1974 and split the island along ethnic lines following a coup aiming at union with Greece.
