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Protecting the village
Papa Gavriel was the Archimandrites of the monastery, the head monk and he was also a healer. Once in 1928 he was breaking stones and he got some cuts on his legs from the stone chips so he put some soil on the cuts and they stopped bleeding and healed up, that’s how pure the soil here was.
He was a good doctor and would heal the people of the village, healing broken bones lifting curses. He rescued people stopping feuds over land but he would also start feuds himself – he was the wrong priest to argue with!
When he was dying he left a curse on : ' he who stole from his land or cheated people over his land or saw someone stealing his land or cheating someone else over his land,' the curse being that that person would leave no male heirs.
'They would have as many male heirs as there are hairs on the palms on my hand,' he said.
4 or 5 families are said to have vanished from the village over the years, leaving only daughters – some were chopping down his trees, some putting animals on his land, some trying to steal his land.
It is said that one man sold him some land and in the 1940’s decided to take the land back. He became very ill and even the Doctors couldn’t help him. A wise old man in the village remembered Pater Gavriel’s words and told him “ Nephew, leave the Church lands alone.”
So the man wrote a letter giving up his claim to the land and two days later all his symptoms were gone and he was like a 20 year old again.
It is said that in the 1950s the villagers of Anidri tried to build a road from Anidri to Asfendiles by passing the village of Azogires, and going across the priest’s land. All the men of Azogires were ready to stop them with their guns but a temporary halt was called when lawyers got involved. Eventually, work was due to start again. This time the villagers from Asfendiles sided with those from Anidri in favour of the road and as a result only 4 men from Azogires turned up to stop them. They were faced with about 50 Anidrians and the Police stepped in to prevent a fight. The next day, as soon as the Anidri bulldozer got onto the priest’s land, it cut out, rolled down the hill and that was the end of the road.
About 30 years ago the church land up in the hills caught fire. The fire started to expand and to move towards Anidri and Asfendiles. The Azogires people saw the fire up on the hills through their binoculars and saw 100 or so people fighting it, The general view was that the Azogires men did not want the Asfendiles men to say that they had put out the Azogires fire so they went off from Azogires to fight it. When they got to the scene, the fire was out . There was nobody there but the were 99 brushes made from Oleander and Olive branches on the ground.
When the road from Asfendiles was built, they used dynamite to blow up the rocks. On one occasion a rock twice the size of a car was blown up and started rolling down the hillside.
A man started laughing and saying, ”There goes the priest’s olive trees!”
Papa Gavriel was the Archimandrites of the monastery, the head monk and he was also a healer. Once in 1928 he was breaking stones and he got some cuts on his legs from the stone chips so he put some soil on the cuts and they stopped bleeding and healed up, that’s how pure the soil here was.
He was a good doctor and would heal the people of the village, healing broken bones lifting curses. He rescued people stopping feuds over land but he would also start feuds himself – he was the wrong priest to argue with!
When he was dying he left a curse on : ' he who stole from his land or cheated people over his land or saw someone stealing his land or cheating someone else over his land,' the curse being that that person would leave no male heirs.
'They would have as many male heirs as there are hairs on the palms on my hand,' he said.
4 or 5 families are said to have vanished from the village over the years, leaving only daughters – some were chopping down his trees, some putting animals on his land, some trying to steal his land.
It is said that one man sold him some land and in the 1940’s decided to take the land back. He became very ill and even the Doctors couldn’t help him. A wise old man in the village remembered Pater Gavriel’s words and told him “ Nephew, leave the Church lands alone.”
So the man wrote a letter giving up his claim to the land and two days later all his symptoms were gone and he was like a 20 year old again.
It is said that in the 1950s the villagers of Anidri tried to build a road from Anidri to Asfendiles by passing the village of Azogires, and going across the priest’s land. All the men of Azogires were ready to stop them with their guns but a temporary halt was called when lawyers got involved. Eventually, work was due to start again. This time the villagers from Asfendiles sided with those from Anidri in favour of the road and as a result only 4 men from Azogires turned up to stop them. They were faced with about 50 Anidrians and the Police stepped in to prevent a fight. The next day, as soon as the Anidri bulldozer got onto the priest’s land, it cut out, rolled down the hill and that was the end of the road.
About 30 years ago the church land up in the hills caught fire. The fire started to expand and to move towards Anidri and Asfendiles. The Azogires people saw the fire up on the hills through their binoculars and saw 100 or so people fighting it, The general view was that the Azogires men did not want the Asfendiles men to say that they had put out the Azogires fire so they went off from Azogires to fight it. When they got to the scene, the fire was out . There was nobody there but the were 99 brushes made from Oleander and Olive branches on the ground.
When the road from Asfendiles was built, they used dynamite to blow up the rocks. On one occasion a rock twice the size of a car was blown up and started rolling down the hillside.
A man started laughing and saying, ”There goes the priest’s olive trees!”
20 metres from the priest’s olive trees the rock started to go to the right and then to zig-zag through the priest’s olive trees, it turned right again and then into laughing man’s trees, knocking down half of them. The rock ended up below the Turkish Settlement in the valley and it’s still there to this day.
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