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Letter #18, 2021, Friday, April 23: Farewell Dmitry[2021-04-24][Engleză]Letter #18, 2021, Friday, April 23: Farewell Dmitry From the heart of Russia  Today I write to tell you about Dmitry Khafizov.  Dmitry was a man with a large heart, and a larger soul.  A mighty bear of a man... a good and noble man... from the very heart of Russia, from Kazan in Tartarstan... a Christian believer of Russian Orthodox faith... a man who, at the young age of 57, has now gone to his final rest.  Dmitry died on Wednesday, April 21, in his home city of Kazan, capital of Tartarstan. It is said that his death may have been due to the Covid virus.  Farewell Dmitry, old friend.  ***  May eternal light shine upon him, and may he rest in peace. RM   Dmitry Khafizov, a Russian scholar and writer, died on April 21 at the age of 57. Dmitry was instrumental in bringing about the return of the sacred Icon of Our Lady of Kazan back to Kazan after many decades of absence from Russia.  The icon, nicknamed "The Protection of Russia," was lost to Russia just before the Russian revolution in 1917. Evidently, the icon was stolen from a Russian church, then sold to the West. Dmitry labored to trace out the history of what had happened to the icon, and became one of the world's leading experts in the matter. I invited Dmitry to write several article for Inside the Vatican magazine about this history, and he did so. The articles were published and read by some in the circle of Pope John Paul II.  What I did not know for some time was that the icon (or a very early copy of it, the matter is disputed) had already come into the hands of the Vatican(!) in 1993. It was in 1993 brought from Fatima, Portugal, where it had been kept in a special chapel there since the 1970s. It was brought at the request of John Paul II, after the Soveit union collapsed in 1991, because he thought it might now be possible to visit Russia, no longer communist. And he thought to carry the icon to Russia. It was brought from Portugal by... then-Archbishop Theodore McCarrick(!), who was an advisor to the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima.  When I learned that the icon was in the possession of Pope John Paul II, I called the Pope's secretary, Don Stanislaw Dziwisz, and asked if we might meet. He agreed to receive me. It was late summer, 2001.  I told Monsignor Stanislaw that I had traveled in Russia, had visited Kazan, had met Dmitry Khafizov and others, and had been told that the lost icon had been found, and was in the hands of the Pope.  "Venga," Don Stanislaw Dziwisz said. "Come with me."  We went up a flight in a small elevator and came out in the Pope's study.  "There is the icon," don Stanislaw said to me, in a low voice.  I turned where he indicated, and I can testify that, with a certain odd feeling of vertigo as if I were in the presence of an object that was both an exquisite work of art and a sacramental, a holy icon pulsing with a certain mystical energy I myself saw and stood before "The Protection of Russia," the icon of Our Blessed Mother of Kazan, hanging on the wall in the study of Pope John Paul II, in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, in the summer of 2001.  "Mary wants to return to Russia," don Stanislaw said to me, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world to say. "We are trying to find the way."  He meant, it seemed to me, that the Virgin Mary, both depicted in and also "visible through" the icon we were standing in front of, wished to return to and be present in Russia.  I told Dmitry I had seen the icon. Dmitry was very happy, and said he was committed to finding a way to assist the return of the icon, perhaps by having John Paul carry it to Kazan on an historic first papal visit to Russia.  That visit, of course, never occurred.  But Dmitry was nevertheless instrumental in bringing about the return to Russia of the Vatican icon, in August 2004, when now Cardinal McCarrick and Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Vatican's ecumenical office, together brought it to Moscow.  That same icon is today in Kazan. It has come home, after so many decades, after the entire period of the Soviet Union. The Russian Orthodox Church has built a new cathedral to house the precious icon, and it will be dedicated in Kazan on the Orthodox feast day of Our Lady of Kazan, July 21, 2021-- in just three months' time.  Dmitry's passing means he will not be present in the flesh at that dedication, which was the chief object of his life's work.  But he will be present, I am sure, in spirit, as the return of the icon of Kazan to Kazan completes the work of his life.  (Photo: "BUSINESS Online")  Dmitry of Kazan  Dmitry Khafizov was my friend. I feel it is a privilege, and honor, to say those words.  We met on my first visit to Kazan, in the summer of 2000.  We talked, and talked, and walked, and talked some more. I was impressed with his extraordinary knowledge of the history of the icon of Kazan, and asked him to write a series of articles on the icon for Inside the Vatican magazine.  Dmitry invited me to go with him and a group of youngsters to a summer camp outside of the city, on the shores of a clear, cold pond. He took me into the forests, and a taught me how to aim and fire a rifle. (I received a terrific jolt from the recoil in my shoulder, and did not hold the rifle steadily, and missed the target badly. He laughed.)  In February of 2001, I was back in Russia, and met Dmitry in Kazan. One night, the temperature was perhaps 20 degrees below zero. I wore two ski parkas, one over the other. He slapped me on the back and said, "Isn't this nice weather? Makes one feel so alive!"  As I was leaving the city, I told him that I wanted to buy a little souvenir, a balalaika (a type of traditional Russian guitar, with beautiful paintings on the wood).  "We will find one," he said. He took me to one shop -- no balalaikas. We went to a second shop. No luck. "I'm sorry," he said. "But now we must go. You will miss your train back to Moscow."  I replied: "Then I will miss it."  He looked at me. "Ok," he said. "I know of one more shop."  And we entered a third store, and there was a colorful balalaika, black and red and blue, which made the same plaintive sound that I recalled from the film Dr. Zhivago. "Now you can leave Russia," Dmitry said, "carrying something of Russia with you." And I took the balalaika, and we drove to the train station, and I caught the night train to Moscow...  Years later, in 2013, when my boys traveled east to west on the Trans-Siberian railroad, starting in Beijing, coming up through Mongolia via the border post at Zamyn-Uud, then into Russian Siberia at Ulan-Ude, I told them to stop in Kazan. After many days of traveling through the vast forests of white birches in central Siberia, greeting Russian soldiers as they got on and off the train, sometimes lending them their guitars and singing songs with them, the boys reached Kazan.  Dmitry came to meet them at the train station.  "Welcome to Kazan, sons of Robert!" he said to them, embracing them with his typical bear hug.  He escorted them around the city, as if he were their long-lost uncle, and he brought them to see the icon of Our Lady of Kazan. You may imagine how grateful I was to "Uncle Dmitry."  The boys then came on to Moscow and down through Ukraine to Kiev and Lyshnya and finally to Rome. We were able to stay together in the Domus Santa Marta (it was just after the Pope's trip to Rio de Janeiro) and they were able to speak with Pope Francis for some minutes. They told Francis about their trip across Mongolia and Russia, and the songs with the soldiers on the train, and the visit to see the icon in Kazan, where Dmitry was their guide. And the Pope said that he appreciated hearing their stories, and believed they had done a good thing in sharing their guitars, because music is "a wonderful way to build bridges of friendship" between people of different nations.  "Very sad," Christopher just wrote to me, after I told him Dmitry had died. "He was one of the most vivid personalities I have met."  *** If souls may be likened to sparks of light, sparks born in eternity which fall to the earth like a shower of sparkling lights, similar to fast-moving meteors, brilliant in the night sky, shining for a time in our world before returning to whence they came, perhaps I may be permitted to compare Dmitry to a mighty meteor, bright and pulsing with a love of divine light. Dmitry was a spark of light and life and laughter in a world often more than half in shadow, the dark shadow of life-ending death a death now trampled under by the work of Christ, Mary's son, who accepted death to unwind the spell of death, "trampling death by death," as the Byzantine liturgy proclaims.  Dmitry bore witness to Christ with his whole life.  *** Dmitry was a Russian Orthodox believer living in a city which is in some way the "spiritual heart" of Russia. Kazan. Far Kazan. Kazan is unique in the world.  Sitting on the mighty Volga River, 600 miles directly east of Moscow, Kazan is almost (it seems to me) the beating heart of the Eurasian land mass, the beating heart of the central "world island"... an "island" which runs from Vietnam to Norway, from Portugal and Spain (but also from Morocco and Algeria and all of Africa, since the Mediterranean, as the Romans knew, is a bridge to the African continent, not a barrier) to Vladivostok and Kamchatka... the Asian-European-African island... So, the center of the great "world island." We met in Kazan, at the center of the world, and we labored to do what we might to bring "the Protection of Russia" (the icon of Our Lady) back to the heart of Russia, to the heart of the world island.  *** Dmitry exemplified a willingness to work together, to be together, to walk together. There was a closeness between our souls Catholic and Orthodox, western and eastern. We were as one as we worked towards a common goal to bring the Icon of Kazan back to the House of Mary, Russia. It was just one example among so many in these past 30 years which affirmed for all of us at Urbi et Orbi Communications what our mission is the restoration of Unity. We have been given a great gift by Dmitry and so many others the gift of friendship, enabling us, slowly and painstakingly, to build a strong network around the Catholic Church and with our Orthodox brothers and sisters. This has provided the foundation for our greatest work, a work which we are about to launch worldwide: Unitas: "Come, Rebuild My Church." We are looking for 24 "Elders" and 153 "Founding Members" (we already have 60 of these Founding Members) to become the principal sponsors of this work, which will use every means to restore unity within the Catholic Church and to recover unity between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.  With your support and encouragement, we will continue the work we began with Dmitry, bringing Mary back to Russia, and bringing the "lux ex oriente" ("the light from the East") back to the West.  Unitas: "Come, Rebuild My Church" will carry out initiatives to build this unity -- within the Catholic Church and between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, and in doing so between each of our souls and God one stone at a time... one living stone at a time, as with Dmitry... as with Dmitry, who has now gone on before us...  Unitas: "Come, Rebuild My Church": Join Us  An image of Dmitry's city of Kazan  No poetry could I find, to render more appropriate homage to Dmitry, yet I did come across some lines of homage written by Tartarstan's late poet laureate, Dmitry's fellow citizen, a Muslim Tartar named Ravil Bukharaev.  Ravil too became a friend. He wrote these words 25 years ago to praise Kazan, the city he loved (from Ravil's 1995 publication titled Kazan, The Enchanted City):  How diverse is the enchanted capital, and how  diverse are the people who live there! The  history of any city is the story of each individual,  the genealogical tree of each family, whole  generations who lived side by side, sharing with  their neighbors all the burdens and the rare joys  which they experienced, especially in this, the  tenth century of the existence of the city on  the hills.  Not much time is left before Kazan enters its  second millennium. What will it be like then?  The belief is strengthened when one looks in the  the faces of the Kazanians, who have not lost  faith in humanity, nor their craftsmanship and  love of work, nor the great tolerance of their  ancestors.  But one cannot live in the past, although the  nostalgia is strong, and the lessons of history  are instructive. The city is built for living, and  not for memories.   *** Below are some rough Google translations of Russian reports on Dmitry's death. I apologize for the roughness of the translations, but leave them so that you get a sense of the Russian language. RM  Note: If you would like to make a donation to support the work of Urbi et Orbi Communications, click here or on the button below: Donate to Support Our Work Sursa: www.InsideTheVatican.com Contor Accesări: 618, Ultimul acces: 2026-04-22 03:31:26
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