As is his custom, Pope Francis met in Kazakhstan with representatives of the local Church: bishops, religious, priests, seminarians and lay leaders.
In these addresses, he often urges the faithful to find hope in the memory of what Jesus has done for them, including in their first call, and in the history of their people.
To the small Kazakh Church, he also had a word of encouragement since they represent only 1% of the country's population.
A miracle from the Queen of Peace
At the end of his address, the Pope expressed his affection as Successor of Peter: "Please know that I am close to you. I encourage you to embrace your spiritual inheritance with joy and to bear generous witness to it, so that all whom you meet may realize that there is a promise of hope meant for them as well. I accompany all of you with my prayers."
And then he mentioned the miracle that is at the heart of the Shrine of Our Lady of Peace in Ozernoye, the only Marian shrine in Central Asia.
Nets cast in a lake of mercy
The Pope was referring to a miracle that took place on March 25, 1941.
The year before, on February 10, 1940, the first of four massive deportations of Polish people to Kazakhstan and Siberia took place. Perhaps as many as 2 million Poles were deported, many of them elderly or children, since men were serving in the military. As many as half died on the way; the rest were forced to survive as best they could in the freezing conditions of these uninhabitable lands.
In 1941, the little food they had was taken for the men on the front lines. In their desperation, the prisoners turned to Our Lady. In the midst of temperatures reaching 40 or 50 degrees below zero, they begged for a miracle.
And it was in March that suddenly the snow began to melt, and a lake appeared. What's more, the lake was full of fish, and the people avoided starvation. Ozernoye means the City of the Lake.
The image in the shrine, commissioned by Archbishop José Luis Mumbiela Sierra, shows the Child Jesus giving fish to Our Lady, who distributes them in the net below. "The Mother places them in the nets, which are our prayers, nets cast out in the lake of mercy," the bishop explained.
