Moscow, June 14, 2017

In a rather unusual occurrence, a pod of dolphins “returned” an icon of the Mother of God to people on the beach in Sochi, reports The Russian People’s Line, and Orthodox England.

A colonel and his wife, relaxing and enjoying the beach atmosphere on May 17, were witnesses to the event, their attention being drawn when a group of twelve dolphins swam all the way up to the beach itself. The bewildered couple wondered what the typically smart animals were doing on the beach, when suddenly they threw something out of the water, immediately swimming off.

How the icon wound up on the ocean floor, and how the dolphins knew that it needed to be returned to shore, no one knows. Perhaps the dolphins recognized in the icon the grace of their Creator and of His Most Pure Mother.

The colonel then brought the icon to Moscow, with hopes of showing it to His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, and telling him the miraculous story of how it was “found.”

A similar event took place in 2013, when an 1896 icon of the Iveron Mother of God washed up on shore in Sochi, on the eve of its new calendar October 26 commemoration.