Russia's great thirst for a return to Jesus and Mary

In Russia, a country evangelized since the 10th century, the 20th century was marked by 70 years of religious persecution by the Communist regime. The resulting staggering death toll is estimated at 50 million in Europe, and no less in China if we include the fallout from the wars.

The Communist persecution of Christians was more terrible than the Roman persecution of the early Church. People in a position of influence, even if clandestine, were arrested, brainwashed or destroyed by special drugs in psychiatric hospitals. The KGB controlled or infiltrated the churches.

Yet countless Christians found the strength to resist. By their self-sacrifice in the face of suffering, or by their martyrdom, they were often for non-Christians a sign, a reference point and foundation of the Resistance movement. 

The workers' resistance, the movement based on Mary, a vast conversion movement, the hunger for God, all these showed that Communism was not a workers' movement, that it did not liberate and that religion would not die. There were also several decisive Marian events: on February 13, 1917, just before the Fatima apparitions and the October Revolution, Our Lady appeared in Moscow with an icon of the Virgin Queen (1). Soon after came the apparitions of Mary at Fatima, which the Russian resistance was able to learn about thanks to clandestine networks, despite the government information blackout.

All these factors, plus the arrival on the throne of Peter of a man from the East, the Polish pope Karol Wojtyla, who had lived under Communism and took on the name of John Paul II, led to the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union. And it happened without a war of liberation! Victory came not through the crushing of the Eastern bloc, but through reconciling love (2).

Today, we are witnessing a growing number of Orthodox pilgrims visiting shrines in the countries of the former Soviet Union. The faithful are visiting sites that survived the Communist era. 

The greatest number of feasts of icons of the Virgin Mary are found in Moscow (23), St. Petersburg (5, including the feast of the Jasna Góra icon on March 6) and Kiev (5).

Other important Marian shrines are : Kursk, Smolensk, Wiazniki, Tobolsk, Vitebsk, Vologda, Novgorod and Pochaiov. Pilgrimages range from a few days to several months.

There is a great hunger for religion among Russians, both Catholic (a minority) and Orthodox.

Adapted and translated from: Marian Encyclopedia

(1) www.egliserusse.eu

(2) Cf. R. Laurentin, Comment la Vierge Marie leur a rendu la liberté, ŒIL, Paris, 1991