Patriarch Alexy, the head of the Russian Church, thanked the Pope, who views the gift as a goodwill gesture. But he also appealed to Rome not to try to “compete” for Russian Christians.

The icon was handed over by Catholic Cardinal Walter Kasper in a ceremony at the Kremlin’s Cathedral of the Assumption after a service to mark the Orthodox Feast of the Assumption.

It is expected to be housed temporarily in a chapel at Patriarch Alexy’s residence until a decision is taken on its permanent home.

For his part, the Pope said in a message that despite the division between Moscow and Rome, the icon was a “symbol of the unity of the followers of the only-begotten son of God” This was not the way it was supposed to happen. John Paul II had a different plan in mind for the return of the Icon of Kazan to Russia “he wanted to deliver it personally to Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II, as a sign of rapprochement between the two Churches divided since 1054.

Instead, on Wednesday the Pope said goodbye to the icon, at the Vatican, during an incense-filled Liturgy of the Word celebration in Paul VI Hall.

By handing the icon over to two emissaries, Cardinals Walter Kasper and Theodore McCarrick, who took it to Russia, the Holy Father has once again shown the world an example of humility in accepting that the most cherished of man’s plans are not always God’s plans.

“How many times have I prayed to the Mother of God of Kazan,” said John Paul II on Wednesday of the icon which has hung over his desk in the papal apartments for the past 10 years, “asking her to protect and guide the Russian people and to precipitate the moment in which all the disciples of her Son, recognizing themselves as brothers, will know how to reconstruct in fullness their compromised unity.”

Cardinal Walter Kasper who heads the Vatican delegation in Moscow to present the icon, believes that the icon is “a symbol of the new Europe and its formation, of which Russia is a part.”

Cardinal Kasper, the president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, made that comment during a Mass in St. Peter’s basilica, prior to his departure for Moscow. Our Lady of Kazan, he said, is “the protector of Europe and its Christian roots.” After its long stay in Western Europe and particularly at the Vatican, he added, the icon has become “a point of reference” for Orthodox and Catholic believers.

“After two world wars, and the phenomena of secularisation, Europe needs to be founded again in the faith,” the German cardinal said. The return of the icon back to Russia, he said, will be “a symbol of union between West and East, the symbol of union of faith.”

The image of Our Lady of Kazan, painted on wood, dates back to the 13th century. It became a focal point for Russian national sentiments in 1612, when the icon was brought to Moscow, as the Russian people prayed for deliverance from Polish occupation. When the Polish army finally left Moscow on October 22, 1612, that date (November 4 on the Gregorian calendar) became known as the feast of Our Lady of Kazan.

Many experts believe that the original icon has been lost, and the veneration of Our Lady of Kazan has become associated with an early copy, made in the 17th century. In any case, early in the 18th century the icon known as that of Our Lady of Kazan was transferred from Moscow to St. Petersburg, where Tsar Peter the Great made his new capital. There it was housed in a church constructed on the model of St. Peter’s basilica.

During the Russian Revolution, that church in St. Petersburg was pillaged; it was eventually transformed by the Communist regime into a “museum of atheism.” The icon, along with many other religious objects, disappeared; it was apparently sold several times, eventually coming into the possession of Russian Orthodox owners in the United States.

The icon of Our Lady of Kazan was bought in the 1970s by Catholics, who brought it on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima. The image was then installed in a small Byzantine church in the Portuguese town. Pope John Paul discovered it there when he visited Portugal in 1991, and asked to have the famous icon transferred to the Vatican and installed in the papal apartment.

The icon had travelled around the United States in the mid-1970s with members of the Blue Army venerating it as they prayed the rosary for the conversion of communist Russia, as Our Lady of Fatima had requested.

Peter Anderson, a member of the Seattle archdiocesan ecumenical commission, remembers reading about the icon in Soul, the Blue Army magazine.

But the icon really began to occupy Anderson’s time after a 1989 visit to what was then Leningrad - now St. Petersburg - as part of the Leningrad-Seattle Sister Churches program. An Orthodox deacon explained to him how important the icon was for Russian Christians.

When Metropolitan Alexy of Leningrad, the future Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow, visited Seattle in 1989, he had dinner with Father Frederick Miller, then-executive director of the Blue Army.

Miller, who now is the spiritual director of seminarians at Rome’s North American College, said the dinner at Seattle’s Space Needle “was strange.”

The metropolitan and two priests arrived at the popular restaurant at the top of the Space Needle and “sang grace at the top of their lungs. It was quite impressive. Everyone in the restaurant was silent, forks dropped,” Miller said Aug. 23.

Miller said Alexy was interested in knowing the specific history of the Blue Army’s icon - even then there were doubts that it was the 16th-century original - and in finding out about the Blue Army.

But Alexy was wary and nothing was determined at the meeting, the priest said.

By then, the Blue Army had transferred the icon to the Byzantine chapel of the organization’s hotel, the Domus Pacis, in Fatima, Portugal.

Anderson was still keen to do something, so he wrote about the icon and its importance to then-Archbishop Edward Cassidy, the new president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

Although religious freedom was growing in the Soviet Union in 1989, the Cathedral of the Mother of God of Kazan in Leningrad was still a government-run “museum of atheism,” Anderson said.

The Leningrad-Seattle Sister Churches program hoped that if the icon were given to then-Metropolitan Alexy - especially if Pope John Paul gave it to him - it would pressure the government to restore the cathedral to its original use as a place of Orthodox worship, Anderson said.

In 1993 with Miller as director of the Blue Army and then-Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Newark, N.J., as apostolic visitor of the organization, Pope John Paul asked for the icon.

Miller said, “I felt the most important thing I did in my five years as director was to get the icon to the Holy See.”

The icon’s trip home to Russia, he said, “says something very positive about the Blue Army, despite some of its shortcomings. The organization promoted prayers for Russia and an awareness of the need for full Christian unity for most of the 20th century.”

While there was a lot of Cold War rhetoric and even hints of “McCarthyism” - seeing a communist plot behind everything wrong in the world - “the Blue Army promoted a real attentiveness to the Fatima message in the United States,” he said.

Neither Miller nor John Hauf, an editor at Soul from 1988 to 2000, could recall exactly how much the Blue Army had paid for the icon, although both said they thought it was less than US$50,000. The owner apparently drastically reduced her asking price after Russian Orthodox in the United States withdrew their bid for the icon.

Pope John Paul named McCarrick, now cardinal-archbishop of Washington, to be part of his delegation to take the icon to Moscow and return it Aug. 28.

The fact that the pope was not making the trip, the cardinal said, “is a sadness for me because I know he wanted to do this himself for no other reason than to honour the Church and people of Russia and their faith and trust in the mother of God.”

Although “circumstance will not make that possible,” the cardinal said, “the pope felt that it was time that it be returned to Russia.”

While Anderson, too, is disappointed that Pope John Paul is not carrying the icon to Russia, “I think the important thing is that it is happening, and I pray that it is a time of grace.”

“This is better than just keeping the icon, and the holy father is making this a major event,” he said. “What happens this week can touch a lot of Russian hearts.”