Pope’s Icon Just a Copy, Patriarch Tells Putin

The miracle-performing icon of Our Lady of Kazan that the Roman Catholic Church is set to present to the Russian Orthodox Church this month is a copy, an expert commission has discovered.

Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Aleksiy II told Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting held at the patriarch’s residence in Peredelkino Friday that the icon, believed to have been painted by Luke himself, is not the real thing, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

This conclusion was reached by a joint commission that included representatives of the Ministry of Culture, the Russian Orthodox Church and the Vatican. “They opened up the icon’s cover and admitted that it dates from the end of the 18th century,” the news agency quoted the patriarch as saying.

The patriarch noted that “this is one of numerous copies, and not the miracle-working image that disappeared at the beginning of the 20th century”.

“So there is now no need for the Pope to deliver it (the icon) personally.”

The icon was to be brought to Russia by two cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church.

The icon made its way into to Russia through the Byzantine Empire, and disappeared in the upheavals of the Bolshevik revolution.