“It’s like a lie. Let’s go… Makarios didn’t die.” “Cyprus is an orphan”. “Three attacks within six hours stopped the “heart of Cyprus”.
It is August 3, 1977 and the clock reads 05:15. RIK broadcasts a few minutes later. “Cyprus Radio Foundation. It’s six o’clock. We are broadcasting breaking news.
The people have been mourning the death of the President of the Republic, Archbishop Makarios, since this morning. Makariotatos died at five fifteen in the morning, from a heart attack.”
Society mourns. Hundreds flood the streets of the island to mourn. Dressed in black and with tears in their eyes, they say goodbye to Archbishop Makarios. The walls are filled with a slogan: “He lives”.
Archbishop Makarios: “as long as this heart beats, its pulses will be the pulses of struggle for the salvation of Cyprus”
The MEGA series, “Famagusta”, gives us the occasion to remember the last hours of Makarios. The Archbishop and first president of the Republic of Cyprus, Makarios, has a dominant position in the third and last cycle of the series that was so loved and is loved and comes with a new sensational episode on Sunday, November 10 at 21:00.
The personality, life and works of Makarios – embodied by Grigoris Valtinos, as depicted in the MEGA series, have been drawn from historical evidence.
His personal doctors watch him speak at the opening of the Cyprus International Exhibition. The tension in his words rises. With a nod they urge him to finish. His heart is already burdened.
“I will stop, but I must emphasize that as long as this heart beats, its pulses will be the pulses of struggle for the salvation of Cyprus.”
“Our fight will continue. The three years that have passed have proven that our people do not bend and do not bend under any difficulties and adversities, for three years we have been living a great drama every day.
Graves and crosses, over which black-clad mothers bend and mourn, missing people, who are worried about their fate, trapped, who are worried about their livelihood, occupation of our lands, uprooting of our brothers, desecration of our sanctuaries are aspects of the great Cypriot drama” .
Archbishop Makarios appears for the last time and speaks publicly at the all-Cypriot rally condemning the Turkish invasion on July 20, 1977.
Three heart attacks in six hours
It all started on Palm Sunday 1977. On April 3, he suffered his first heart attack. He was hospitalized in the Nicosia Hospital with the doctors being categorical: he had to stop smoking. He did it. With timid steps he re-entered the flow of everyday life.
Exactly four months later, he is working in his office in the Archdiocese. He feels a sharp pain in his chest. His doctors rush to the Archdiocese.
The office of Archbishop Makarios in the Archdiocese.
Doctor Leonidas Pileidis undertook to give him an electric shock. The electrocardiogram shows that he has suffered a myocardial infarction. Minutes later and with the doctors making superhuman efforts to stabilize him, Makarios has a second episode of ventricular fibrillation.
His heart stopped beating at 5.15am on August 3rd. An article in the newspaper “Makedonia” spoke of three heart attacks in a period of six hours.
“The primitive and unacceptable mortuary processes”
The autopsy of Makarios was carried out on the spot in his bed in the Archdiocese and was carried out by the pathologist of the Nicosia General Hospital Panos Stavrinos, in the presence of doctors Lyssaridis and Kalpian.
In the book “Cypriot doctors’ works” by doctor Lakis Anastasiadis, he refers to the “primitive and unacceptable postmortem procedures”.
The people from Makarios’ close circle stubbornly refused to have his body transferred to the morgue. As a result it was not possible to record an official post-mortem report.
Stavrinos told the author of the book that: “the coronary vessels had extensive narrowings with diffuse calcification and hardening. There was a scar from an old heart attack, the one he had suffered in April 1977.
33 years later
The heart was hypertrophied and its weight was estimated – we did not have the necessary scale for accurate measurement – at approximately 450 – 480 grams. I removed the heart from the body and personally transported it to London for further examinations, following the instructions of the then Government Representative, Miltiadis Christodoulou”.
After Makarios’ heart was removed, it was taken by doctor Panos Stavrinos to London for further tests.
Stavrinos describes: “Nothing different was found by the English and on my return I embalmed her and handed her over to the Archdiocese for safekeeping where she remained until 2010.”
For 33 years, the heart of Makarios was far from his body which was buried in the Throne of Panagia in the area of the Holy Monastery of Kykkos, at a point chosen by the Archbishop himself so that he could gaze at the whole of Cyprus.
On the initiative of Archbishop Chrysostomos II, the heart of Makarios was placed in his tomb in 2010 at the Throne of Our Lady of Kykkos.
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