Our Lady of Kazan

Our Lady of Kazan is a venerated icon of the Virgin Mary regarded as the protector of the city of Kazan and, by tradition, of Russia as a whole, honored in both the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Greek Catholic Church. According to tradition a young girl named Matrona discovered the icon in Kazan on July 8, 1579, after a vision; the original was stolen from the Kazan Convent in 1904 and is believed to have been destroyed. A widely venerated later copy passed from Fatima to the private study of Pope John Paul II in the Vatican before he returned it to Russia in 2004, and it is now enshrined in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan at the Kazan Mother of God Monastery.