Vladivostok, June 14, 2012
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The global event will begin in Vladivostok—a procession with the Chenstokhova icon. The journey will begin at the Pacific Ocean and end on the Atlantic coast, covering 18,000 kilometers, related Igor Ivanovich Beloborodov, the coordinator of the International campaign for the defense of life and family values, “From Ocean to Ocean”.
“The goal of this international procession, ‘From Ocean to Ocean’ is to once again awaken all of us to the need for preserving family values. After all, a family is a miniature church, and that is why the enemy of mankind is trying to destroy family stability. Moral corruption and demographic crises are taking over entire countries, practically the entire globe, and that is why the need has arisen to have an international procession with the Czestochowaicon,” noted the head of the Department of Church Charity and Social Services of the Vladivostok diocese, Archpriest Alexander Talko.
The international procession with the Czestochowa icon of the Mother of God will take place in the form of an auto relay. The event is called “From Ocean to Ocean” because its route runs from the Pacific Ocean (Vladivostok, Russia) to the Atlantic Coast (Lisbon, Portugal), and passes through more than 20 European countries. There are also plans in the works to include Australia.
The original wonderworking Czestochowa Icon of the Mother of God (known in the West as the “Black Madonna”) is preserved in a Roman Catholic monastery at Yasna Gora near the city of Czestochowa, Petrov Province, in present-day Poland. It is believed to be one of the seventy icons written by the holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke. Tradition says that the icon was taken from Jerusalem when the Romans conquered the city in 66 AD, and was hidden in a cave near Pella. The icon was given to St. Helen when she visited the Holy Land in 326, and she brought it back to Constantinople.
The icon was brought to the Belz fortress in Russia in the 8th century, and miraculously saved the people from a Tatar invasion. After this it was taken by Prince Vladislav to Poland, where the monastery at Yasna Gora was built especially to keep it. It remains in this Catholic monastery to this day, and is the center of vast pilgrimages. Many other miracles have occurred through prayer before the Czestochowa icon of the Mother of God.
Czestochowa, Poland was also the site of the January 2012 international convention of Pro-Life movement representatives. The “From Ocean to Ocean” procession was discussed at this convention.
