Patriarch Kirill said that he found an icon that had disappeared almost 120 years ago

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, announced that he had found the icon of the Kazan Mother of God that had been lost almost 120 years ago.

“We see in front of us the original of the miraculous image of the Mother of God of Kazan, before which Pozharsky and Minin prayed and which saved our people from foreign intervention and it is unknown from what consequences of this intervention,” the patriarch said during the liturgy in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin on the occasion of the Orthodox holiday – Day of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God. “Interfax” quotes Kirill’s words.

The icon was stored in a warehouse in his residence in Peredelkina near Moscow, the patriarch said. According to Kirill, at first he decided that the icon was a copy, but then he decided to submit it for examination.

Experts have confirmed that the icon belongs to the era in which the image was created, noted Kirill. “It is absolutely obvious that two identical icons could not have been created at that time and that this is a miraculous image, the same image before which both Minin and Pozharsky prayed,” the patriarch summed up. He did not provide any evidence for his words.

Kirill admitted that he did not dare to announce the find, but then realized that it would be impossible to hide the story.

• The Kazan icon of the Mother of God is one of the main Orthodox shrines. According to legend, she appeared in Kazan in 1579 during the reign of Tsar Ivan the Terrible.
• In the early 1900s, the probable original of the icon was kept in the Kazan Monastery of the Mother of God. In 1904, the icon was stolen. The investigation then came to the conclusion that the icon was burned in the house of one of the accused in the theft. There were also versions that a copy of the icon was actually stolen, and the attackers sold the original.

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