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Icon
of
Our Lady of Victories

Sourced from Ukrainian Catholic Iconographers - reached the UK having survived live fire - now we are in the final stages of planning its Blessing.

The Icon will be Blessed by Right Reverend Kenneth Nowakowski OBE, the Eparchial Bishop of the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of the Holy Family of London, and Bishop Paul Mason, Bishop of the Forces, on 7 Oct 2025, Feast Day of Our Lady of Victories.

If you would like to attend the Blessing, please send us an email.

From this first viewing onward, the Icon will endure as a focus for veneration of the Богородиця by both the British and Ukrainian service personnel. It will be transported as an object of veneration and contemplation to meet soldiers wherever the need exists.

Why Our Lady of Victories?

Our Lady of Victories is the Patron Saint of the CMA. She is also known as Our Lady of the Rosary, and encouraging people to pray the Rosary as a means of victory over their own vices is a fundamental part of our apostolate. We are named for her and have a devotion to her, but it's difficult to find images of Our Lady of Victories specifically.

Why an Icon?

We don't believe an Icon of Our Lady of Victories has ever previously been written. Icons are an important part of the history of both the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches. As St Thomas Aquinas explains, "Religious worship is not directed to images in themselves, considered as mere things, but under their distinctive aspect as images leading us on to God incarnate. The movement toward the image does not terminate in it as image, but tends toward that whose image it is."

Where has it come from?

As a way of showing our support to Ukraine, we asked Aid to the Church in Need if they could put us in touch with a Ukrainian Catholic iconographer. ACN acted as an intermediary, but half way through the design process their point of contact was called up to Active Service and everything stopped. We waited and prayed and eventually a way forward was found and the icon was completed. We only knew it was finished once it had left the country, coming under live fire in the process.

Where will it be installed?

This Icon is given by and for the serving personnel of the UK Armed Forces. Serving personnel have commissioned it and they will be able to venerate it in the Catholic Cathedral Church of St Michael and St George which serves as the Roman Catholic cathedral for the Bishopric of the Forces. We are in the process of planning the Blessing; get in touch if you would like to attend. We are also planning for the Icon to visit various significant sites around the country, such as Walsingham.

Be a part of this extraordinary story...

When the war in Ukraine started, we felt at a loss. How could we practically support those so far away? An answer came in prayer - commission an Icon of Our Lady of Victories.

We began discussing designs through our ACN intermediary, but then the line went cold. Our POC had been called up to Active Service. We prayed for him, and we waited. And sure enough, eventually plans picked up again and so we waited and hoped some more. Finally we were told that a box would soon be arriving from Ukraine, and the ACN thought that our Icon might be in it. We continued to wait and to pray and eventually it arrived.

The Icon of Our Lady of Victories had been written. It had even survived coming under fire in Ukraine when it was being transported out of the country. Although we haven't seen it yet, now that it's safely in the UK, we are preparing to have it installed for veneration in the Bishopric of the Forces Cathedral in Aldershot.

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