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An amazing thing happened to me today. We were in Loreto, where Franco Terilli was praying to his patron, one of the popes. In Loreto there is a famous cathedral (rather like Lourdes) in the middle of which stands the house in which Jesus was born, transported here from Nazareth. While we were in the cathedral, I felt it was wrong that I can't pray in a Catholic cathedral; not that I cannot, but that I don't want to. It is, after all, alien to me. Then later, quite by chance, we went into a little seaside town called Porto Nuovo, and into its small, tenth century cathedral. And what should I see on the altar but the Vladimir Mother of God
Apparently some Russian painter had, at some time, given the church this copy of the Mother of God of Vladimir, evidently painted by him.
I couldn't believe it: suddenly to see an Orthodox ikon in a Catholic country, when I had just been thinking about not being able to pray at Loreto.
It was wonderful.
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