March 20
Matka Boża Bołszowiecka, Gdańsk, Poland
Like many sacred objects in Eastern Europe, the history of this icon
reflects that of its troubled region. It has had to keep moving to
survive.
While fighting the Tatars, Hetman Marcin Kazanowski found a painting of the Mother of God in the Dnieper River. Not long after, on March 20, 1624, he had the image installed in a Carmelite convent that he founded in Bołszowce, then in southeastern Poland. The Catholic Church honored the picture with a canonical coronation in 1768 and again in 1777.
When Russians attacked in 1916, Carmelites moved the image to Lviv. The town of Bołszowce, largely destroyed during World War II and the Soviet occupation, is now Bilshivtsi, Ukraine. In 1945, the Carmelite church in Lviv was closed, so the image moved to Kraków. In 1968 it took refuge in St. Catherine's Church in Gdańsk. That church burned in 2006, but most of its holy objects, including the Mother of God of Bołszowce, were saved.
Sources:
 | Carmelites of Gdańsk, www.gdansk.karmelici.pl |
| Koronowane obrazy, www.theotokos.ovh.org (photo) |
Also commemorated this date:
| Notre-Dame de la Consolation, Calevoet, Uccle, Brussels, Belgium. Chapel dedicated, 1425. |
| Notre-Dame de Cîteaux, Saint-Nicolas-lès-Cîteaux, Côte-d'Or, Burgundy, France. Monastery founded, 1098. |
| Our Lady of Ports, Ernakulam, Kerala, India. Pope Paul VI designated the church a Basilica Minor, 1974. |
| Santissima Concezione, Genoa, Italy. First stone of new Capuchin church placed, 1593. |