Pope returns icon to Russian Orthodox Church

POPE John Paul II said he hoped the return of a precious icon to the Russian Orthodox Church would hasten “mutual understanding and reconciliation” between the Roman Catholic Church and its eastern counterpart.

The 84-year-old Pope was speaking at a ceremony at the Vatican marking the return of the icon of Our Lady of Kazan to the Russian Church in what Vatican analysts said is an ecumenical gesture designed to heal a longstanding rift with Orthodoxy.

He also said he hoped the gesture would speed the Christian Churches toward “full unity.”

The special ceremony was part of the Pope’s weekly general audience, attended by around 7,000 pilgrims, many of whom held up video cameras and took flash photographs as a priest carried the icon high above his head into the audience. After kissing the 30cm (11-inch) high, 16th century icon which has hung over his office desk for more than a decade, the pontiff symbolically entrusted it to Cardinal Walter Kasper, a senior Vatican official who will take it to Moscow to present to Orthodox Partriarch Alexy II on Saturday.

“May this ancient image of the Mother of the Lord speak to His Holiness Alexy II and the venerable Synod of the Orthodox Church, of the affection of the successor of Peter for them and for all their faithful,” said the Pope.

The icon will be placed in St Peter’s basilica in the Vatican for public veneration on Thursday, before the delegation led by Kasper, the Vatican official with responsibility for promoting Christian unity, takes it to Moscow to present to the partriarch.

The Orthodox Church, which has long accused Rome of proselytism by setting up parishes in traditionally-Orthodox eastern countries, including Russia and Ukraine, has played down the gesture, saying the icon is only one of several copies of the original.