OUR LADY OF THE ROSES - THE EARLY YEARS
Veronica--On February the 27th, 1970, there was a message that I thought perhaps you would be interested in hearing: Last night there appeared an exceptionally large star in the east. And as I begged Our Father to help save the holy man in danger, the star changed into a large, illuminated cross ... [words unclear] formed with a large "V", the star was transformed into these two shapes by Our Father. This was Thursday, approximately 12 p.m. after Shirley and Catherine had called on the telephone. Well, what this message is referring to is about a week previously I saw in vision a holy man who was going to be assassinated, and it was such a frightful scene that I begged our Father in some way to forestall this, and later on, as time developed, that this holy man was Archbishop Makarios, on the island of Cyprus, and we did solicit prayers at the Archabbey in St. . . . [words unclear] from the abbot and all the priests, to ask and plead with Heaven to prevent this assassination, and with the coming with the date--I believe it was March the 8th--there was an attempt made on Archbishop Makarios' life, but his pilot in the helicopter was seriously wounded, and Archbishop Makarios was covered with blood.2 But in Heaven's goodness and perhaps with the plans for the future, this was averted. This does prove the power of prayer, from loving hearts to Heaven.
2The New, York Times, March 9, 1970, p. 7, "Makarios is Safe in Sniper Attack: Pilot of Cyprus Leader Shot in Assassination Attempt," by Richard Eder.
"Nicosia, Cyprus, March 8--Archbishop Makarios, the President of Cyprus, barely escaped assassination this morning when machine-gun and rifle fire riddled his helicopter moments after it took off from the front of his archepiscopal palace here.
"The news spread rapidly through Nicosia, where many residents had been awakened by the shots. It caused grave apprehension on this island, which has been violently divided by the quarrel between Greek and Turkish Cypriotes. There were no reports of disturbances, however, and there was no suggestion that the Turkish Cypriote minority had anything to do with the attempt on the life of the President, a Greek Cypriote. Instead, suspicion seemed to center on various armed extremist groups in the Greek Cypriote community who are hostile to President Makarios's policies.
"The shots, fired from the roof of a high school opposite the palace, missed the Archbishop by inches. One of them hit the pilot beside him in the back, gravely wounding him. Nevertheless the pilot, identified as Zacharias Papadoyiannis, managed to fly the helicopter over the palace roof and landed safely in a vacant lot on the other side.
"'I am sorry, sir, I am wounded,' he told President Makarios and collapsed. The bearded Archbishop, his black robes spotted with the pilot's blood, accompanied the pilot to Nicosia General Hospital, where he was in critical condition.
"The attempt, shortly after 7 A.M., occurred while President Makarios was leaving for memorial services at a monastery outside Nicosia for Gregoris Afxentiou, who was killed in the war for independence from Britain in the late nineteen-fifties.
"The president made the trip anyway, by automobile. Seemingly in good spirits, he addressed the meeting of veterans of E.O.K.A., a wartime resistance organization, without referring to the incident. at several points, he was seen testily asking his heavy security guard to move farther away."