Our Lady of Kazan

Our Lady of Kazan, also called Theotokos of Kazan (Russian: Казáнская Богомáтерь), was a holy icon of the highest stature within the Russian Orthodox Church, representing the Virgin Mary as the patroness of the city of Kazan and a protector of all Russia.

According to legend, the icon was originally acquired from Constantinople, lost in 1438 and miraculously recovered in pristine state in 1579. Two major cathedrals, in Moscow and St. Petersburg, are consecrated to Our Lady of Kazan, and display copies of the icon, as do numerous churches throughout the land. The original icon in Kazan was stolen, and likely destroyed, in 1904.

The “Fátima image” is a 16th-century copy of the icon, or possibly the 16th-century original, stolen from St. Petersburg in 1917 and purchased by F. A. Mitchell-Hedges in 1953. It was housed in Fátima, Portugal from 1970 to 1993, in the study of Pope St. John Paul II in the Vatican from 1993 to 2004, when it was returned to Kazan, where it is now kept in the Monastery of the Theotokos.

The Feast day of Our Lady of Kazan celebrated on November 4th is also the Russian Day of National Unity. It commemorates the popular uprising which expelled Polish occupation forces from Moscow in November 1612, and more generally the end of the Time of Troubles and turning point of the Polish-Muscovite War (1605–1618).

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