On Friday 25 January our small parish had the great honour of receiving the revered Kursk-Root Icon of the Mother of God, one of the great treasures of the Russian Orthodox Church and the “Directress” of the Russian Diaspora.  A small group of the Russian and Serbian Orthodox faithful of Newcastle gathered early in the evening for a moleben to the Mother of God with the reading of the Akathist in Slavonic and English.  Following the service the faithful venerated the icon and were anointed with oil from the map that burns before it in the cathedral dedicated to it in New York.