.- Before the Angelus yesterday, Pope John Paul II remarked that August is an important month for many Marian churches and shrines, which organize special celebrations and receive numerous pilgrims.
The Pope took the opportunity to announce that the icon of Our Lady of Kazan, which had been taken out of Russia in the last century and which eventually made its way to the Vatican, will be returned to Russia and given to the Russian Patriach Alexei II this week.
After the Angelus, the Pope greeted all of the participants at the 25th International Communion and Liberation gathering in Rimini, Italy. He extended a special greeting to Bishop Luigi Giussani, founder of the movement.
“Christianity, notwithstanding human limits and errors, constitutes the greatest factory toward true progress,” the Pope told the delegates, commenting on the theme for the gathering, “because Christ is the inexhaustible source for the renewal of mankind and of the world.”
