Saint Andrew

St Andrew's monastery in Cyprus:
This was one of the pilgrimage centres of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, and is at the tip of the Karpas Peninsula in Northern Cyprus, occupied now by the Turkish army.With the borders now open, many pilgrims are starting to visit the Monastery, although the years of neglect since the Turkish Occupation have taken their toll.It was here that St Andrew briefly landed in Cyprus on his final missionary journey back to Palestine.Where St Andrew landed a spring was revealed which healed the blind captain of his ship.A fortified monastery stood on this site in the twelfth century.It was here that Isaac Comnenus negotiated his surrender to Richard the Lion heart.The Chapel,however, built in the fifteenth century is the oldest surviving building.

The shrine became popular after 1895 with the miracle of Maria Georgiou. Seventeen years after the disappearance of her son, St Andrew came to her in a dream and told her to go from her native Cilicia to the neglected Shrine of Apostolos Andreas at the tip of Karpas in Cyprus.On the boat over she told her story to many travellers and particularly excited the attention of a young dervish.He asked her if she could identify her son.She replied she could recognise him by a pair of birthmarks he had on his shoulder and chest.The dervish threw off his cloak and showed the birthmarks and fell at his mothers feet.Within months many pilgrims flocked to the Church, as the Saint performed many miracles both for Greeks and Turks.