(Recently the Lady of Kazan Icon held by the Pope of Rome was deemed a fake ...)
S. F. Shrine for Miraculous Icon
Published by San Francisco Examiner
May 8, 2003 (SFE) -- In an unknown year before 1450, a Russian artist of profound faith painted an icon destined to endure in holiness through the wars of men.
The icon depicts the Blessed Virgin and Child. Credited with countless miracles, it was moved from Kazan to Moscow and rested there from 1612 to 1917. In that year the Bolsheviks ripped "Our Lady of Kazan" from its shrine and sold it to finance their revolution.
The icon is one of three considered holy and miraculous in the Orthodox faith. Many reproductions have been made.
Yesterday the artifact gleamed on a wooden table at the Bank of California, Stockton and Sutter Sts. Fathers of the Russian Orthodox Greek- Catholic Church of America gazed on it reverently and announced a campaign to purchase it from an English family and build a shrine for it here.
Archbishop John Shahovskoy of San Francisco and the Western United States said a 300-seat shrine would be built somewhere in the Western Addition Redevelopment Area.
The icon will rest there "until a stabilized form of Christian government is restored to Russia and the icon can be re-enshrined in Moscow."
San Francisco was chosen as the icon's temporary home, said the Archbishop, because the United Nations was born here.
The icon, a 10 by 13 inch wooden painting partially covered by a jewel-encrusted gold and silver "riza," is priceless. But Miss Anna Mitchell-Hedges of London is asking $500,000 for the market value of the 1,109 precious emeralds, diamonds, rubies, pearls and amethysts mounted on it by the faithful over the centuries.
The shrine will be of the traditional Novgorod school of Russian architecture. It will cost $500,000.
