Sofronios G. Foiniefs

Archbishop of Cyprus from 1865 until 1900 (the era of Turkish and British rule). Sofronios G. was the last archbishop of the Turkish domination era and the first of the British domination period. He was succeeded in the Archbishopric Throne by Makarios the First (1854-1865).

Sofronios was born on the 25th of April 1825 in the village Prodromos of the Limassol district. His mother was a native of Prodromos and his father of the village Foini. At a very young age his family resettled in Foini (from which came the surname “Foiniefs”).

At an early age he joined as a postulant the monastery of Trooditissa where he received his first education. On 16.4.1842 he was ordained into a deacon by the Bishop of Pafos Charitonas. Within that same year he left for Attaleia and from there he went to Smyrna (Izmir) for his studies. In Smyrna he attended the Evangelical School and at the same time he served for 7 years as a deacon in the church of the Orthodox Hospital. He also worked as a teacher in the minor classes of the School. He then went to Athens in order to continue his studies. He attended the “Rizareio School” and he then studied theology and literature in the University of Athens.

When he returned to Cyprus he was appointed as the Head of the Hellenic School of Nicosia, serving in this position from 1861 to 1865. In 1865, after the death of the Archbishop Makarios the First (4th of August), Sofronios was elected as the new Archbishop of Cyprus. In 1871, when the Patriarchic Throne of Constantinople fell vacant, Sofronios was proposed as a candidate Ecumenical Patriarch with the former Patriarch Anthimos and the then Metropolitan Bishop of Chios being the other nominees. The Sultan excluded the Archbishops of Chios and Cyprus and so Anthimos the Fifth was again voted to the Ecumenical Throne.

Sofronios as an Archbishop, himself having been a teacher, showed a vivid interest for education and significantly contributed to the founding of schools. In particular, in 1889 he made representations toward Greece and Egypt so as to secure aid for the founding of a High-school in Cyprus, which indeed started its operation in Nicosia within 1893 (Pan-Cyprian Gymnasium). With Sofronios’s death in 1900 the Greeks of Cyprus divided into two sides, the «uncompromising» that supported a hard, intransigent attitude toward the British and the «conciliatory», which supported that through cooperation better results could be secured. The leaders of the «uncompromising» were within the circle of Kition’s See while the ones of the «conciliatory» were within the circles of the Kyrineia See. Archbishop Sofronios had avoided direct involvement in these matters, preferring to remain inactive during the last few years of his long-lasting term as Archbishop.