President Mary McAleese flew from Malta to Cyprus on Saturday to begin another first official visit by an Irish head of State to a second Mediterranean island.
The opening event belonged to the realm of the profane. President McAleese and Dr Martin McAleese joined Cyprus president Tassos Papadopoulos in the box of honour to watch the football match between the two countries.
Three thousand Irish fans, wearing green, white and orange and flourishing the Tricolour, faced 3,000 Greek Cypriot fans across the field of combat. Both sides were soon stunned into silence while the Cypriot squad scored five goals to Ireland's two: the first time Cyprus has done so and the first time in decades that Ireland lost by five.
Yesterday the McAleeses entered the regime of the sacred when they attended a Catholic Mass at St Columbus church in the UN buffer zone that divides the island between the internationally recognised republic and the Turkish-occupied north.
Following the service, they attended a reception given by the Garda at the UN Civil Police Club. Many of the 18 members serving with the force and their families were on hand to greet the President before her party was driven through a stricken stretch of buffer zone containing bullet-ridden and gutted homes and tangled thickets of dusty trees and cacti. This is a place cleansed of inhabitants - mined and abandoned since Turkey invaded in 1974.
"It's one of the saddest things I've seen for a very, very long time because we ourselves come from a divided island and an island of conflict," said Mrs McAleese.
Contemplating the long separation of the two communities, she said, "You just think of all the wasted years, all the wasted friendships." The buffer zone is "a blight on life here, a blot on the landscape". Ireland's long struggle for peace could help Cypriots find a formula for reconciliation.
With police outriders keeping traffic at bay and car lights flashing, the presidential convoy swept out of the capital and across the Mesaoria plain, up the steep slopes of the Troodos mountains to Kykkos Monastery, founded in the 11th century.
At an ornate church painted with frescoes of biblical scenes, the McAleeses were welcomed by the white-bearded abbot, Bishop Nikiforos, in cassock and tall black hat. He pointed out fine icons glowing on the screen before the altar and guided them through the monastery's museum of church treasures.
Following lunch, the President lay a wreath of sombre bay leaves on the tomb of Archbishop Makarios, leader of Cyprus's independence struggle and first president. On the pine peak above his tomb stands a shrine to the Virgin festooned with strips of white cloth and paper placed by pilgrims wishing for health, happiness and peace.