FAMILY ICON OF ROMANOV DYNASTY RETURNED FROM CANADA TO EKATERINBURG
RRN - NEWSru.com,
July 2003 - Today the icon of the "Three-hand Mother of God" has been returned from Canada to Ekaterinburg. This image was in the Ipatiev house at the time of imprisonment of Nicholas II's family there in 1918. As the director of the department of the Ekaterinburg diocese, Hegumen Dmitry, told a reporter of the ITAR-TASS news agency, the icon is being delivered by the wife of a nephew of the emperor, Olga Kulikovskaia-Romanova.
The image will be presented for permanent residence to the Ekaterinburg Church-on-the-Blood on the site of the murder of the family of the last Russian autocrat. Olga Kulikovskaia-Romanova is fulfilling the instructions of her late husband, Tikhon, who was the owner of the family relic over the course of recent decades.
The icon was found after the shooting of the tsarist family in Ipatiev house. At the beginning of the 1920s it was presented in Denmark to Empress Maria Fedorovna through the efforts of officers devoted to the emperor. Until now, the image has not been outside of the Romanov family circle, who passed it down from generation to generation.
As the hegumen explained, the icon is a copy of the "Three-hand Mother of God" that is located in Hilandar monastery on holy Mount Athos. It will be greeted in Ekaterinburg by a procession of the cross and placed in the Holy Trinity cathedral church until the opening of the Church-on-the-Blood.
