Pope visited Cyprus

Its funny how the lack of air noise can make you so sensitive to the sudden appearance of it.  A couple of weeks ago (I know, I'm really behind on the news lately) I noticed a helicopter flying nearby our house - probably the first in the entire time we've been here.  I remember running through a bunch of silly scenarios in my mind of why it would be in this area.  By the time it had flown away, I had already forgotton it was ever here.  So when I was woken to the whop-whop-whop-whop of a very low flying copter I shot out of bed, grabbed the camera inside the bedstand cabinet and flung open the window to see what all the racket was about.  It was in that moment of early morning sunshine blindness that I realized that the Pope was in town and  would be only a few short blocks away from my house that Sunday morning in a stadium nearby.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to snag tickets, so I clicked away at the helicopter instead, as some sort of momento of his visit.  We knew he was coming a few months back when our priest told us he was actually staying with him at our church and we even asked the nuns if we could delay the Communion, just so the Pope could give his blessings on such a special occasion.  Obviously...we got a no-go on the idea!   I'm just glad they didn't see me hanging out the window clicking away at them, although it would have made for a far more interesting ending!

Small snippet on the visit:
The pope is meeting in Cyprus with prelates from the region to set an agenda for an October meeting in Rome to build a strategy to stem an exodus of Christians from the Holy Land, Iraq and elsewhere because of violence and economic hardship. The Middle East includes ancient Christian communities.
Cyprus was ethnically split in 1974 when Turkey invaded after a coup by supporters of union with Greece. Turkish Cypriots declared an independent republic in the north in 1983, but only Turkey recognizes it, and it maintains 35,000 troops there.
The pope, speaking about the problems of both the division of Cyprus and the Middle East region as a whole, said that "violence is not the solution."