An icon of Mary with bullet holes shot through it is at the center of an extraordinary exhibit was opened on the renewal of Christian faith in Russia since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991.
By Robert Moynihan
Few who stand before the Russian Orthodox icon of Mary and the Child Jesus which went on display today in the Memorial Hall of the Roman Catholic Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception here can avoid a momentary shudder, an involuntary gasp of horror.
Why?
Because the icon, which depicts the Virgin Mary holding her son, Jesus, has 13 bullet holes in it. (The bullets are still there, imbedded in the thick wood of the 19th-century icon. The icon is a 19th-century copy of the famous 16th-century icon of Kazan which Pope John Paul II kept for many years in his apartment in Rome, and which was finally returned to Russia on August 28, 2004.) Several of the bullet holes are in a straight line across the chest of the Virgin Mary, where a blast from a machine-gun evidently strafed the icon with a burst of gunfire.
Mary’s face is untouched.
Photo: Politically correct hatred of Western http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2566 continues, as seen in this icon, desecrated by Greek “anarchists” But her body, had it been a real body, would have been torn apart and killed by those bullets.
There are also bullet wounds in the image of her son, Jesus, as he sits in her arms.
Strikingly, the icon has been transported from Russia to be put on display this Advent in Washington as the centerpiece in an extraordinary, moving exhibition on the revival of faith in Russia following the Soviet time which opened this morning in the lower hall of the largest Catholic basilica in America, the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception — the chief basilica in America dedicated to the Virgin Mary.
“Before the Russian Revolution in 1917, there were more icons and churches dedicated to Mary in Russia than in any other country in the world,” said Father Victor Potapov, a Russian Orthodox priest who is rector of the Russian Orthodox Church of St. John the Baptist in Washington, during a brief ceremony today at 10:30 am to open the exhibit. “Russia in those years, for that reason, was sometimes called ‘The House of Mary.'”
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