The church in Georgia asks to change the icon, where there is a fragment with Stalin

The Patriarchate of Georgia appealed to the donors of the icon of the Matrona of Moscow with a request to change the part of it that depicts the meeting of the saint with the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

As noted in the press service of the patriarchate, if the donor does not change this fragment, the church itself will do it. The request to rewrite the icon was linked to the fact that the Matrona’s meeting with Stalin was not included in the canonical text of the saint’s life.

“Since Stalin’s meeting with Saint Matrona due to a lack of evidence is not included in the canonical text of her life and is not recognized by the Russian Orthodox Church, which canonized her and conducted a special study on this issue, it is necessary to change the mentioned episode and take into account other details related with iconography,” the Patriarchate’s Georgian Service of Radio Liberty reported on Thursday.

The icon, as follows from the message, was donated to the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Tbilisi by the pro-Russian Alliance of Patriots party. The image has been in the cathedral for several months.

Attention was drawn to the icon in January, after Giorgi Kandelaki, a researcher at the SovLab Institute for the Study of the Soviet Past, published a video from the church. Soon it became known that the icon of the Matrona of Moscow was doused with blue paint. It is not known who did it, Meduza notes.

Participants of the pro-Russian Alt-Info movement accused activist Nata Peradze of vandalism, who published a video with a painted icon. A rally was held near Peradze’s house.