American dream: U.S. Catholics hoped Kazan icon would get to Russia

Published: 2004-08-24

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- For Americans who had a hand in getting the icon of the Mother of God of Kazan back to Russia, its transfer was a prayer answered and a dream denied. Pope John Paul II had wanted to carry the Russian icon home, and his traveling to Russia, icon in hand, was part of the dream of many people belonging to the U.S.-based Blue Army-World Apostolate of Fatima, which purchased the icon from an Englishwoman in 1970 and gave it to the pope in 1993. The dream of a papal trip has been set aside, replaced by fervent prayers for better relations between Catholics and Russian Orthodox. The icon -- recently determined to be an 18th-century work -- had traveled around the United States in the mid-1970s with members of the Blue Army venerating it as they prayed the rosary for the conversion of communist Russia, as Our Lady of Fatima had requested. In 1993 with Father Frederick Miller as director of the Blue Army and then-Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick of Newark, N.J., as apostolic visitor of the organization, Pope John Paul asked for the icon. Pope John Paul named Cardinal McCarrick, now archbishop of Washington, to be part of his delegation to take the icon to Moscow and return it Aug. 28.

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