KURSK, September 24 (RIA Novosti) - Several hundred people gathered in the Korennaya (Root) Hermitage in the Kursk Region in central Russia as the head of the Russian Orthodox Church consecrated a church.

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia also held a liturgy in the consecrated church dedicated to the Nativity of the Theotokos, and told believers that shrines are revived even at times of crises and economic downturns.

"Nothing can stop people from turning to faith," the patriarch said.

He awarded Kursk Region governor Alexander Mikhailov with church awards for efforts to revive the monastery, closed in 1923 during the persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union.

The Kursk Root Hermitage, located about 300 miles south of Moscow, was founded in 1597 at the place where a miracle-working icon of the Mother of God was discovered three centuries before.

Patriarch Kirill brought the icon, called the Kursk Root Icon of Our Lady of the Sign, to Kursk on Wednesday, and carried it through the city streets on procession to celebrate the arrival of the treasured icon from the United States.

The shrine was brought to Russia on September 12 and was kept in central Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral before its departure for Kursk. In early October it will be returned to the U.S.

Over 150,000 believers came to pray before the icon while it was in Moscow, and about 30,000 people greeted the icon in Kursk.

The Kursk Root icon dates back to the 13th century. A hunter from the city of Rylsk near Kursk came across a small icon lying face down on a root of a tree in the year 1295. He picked it up, and a spring of pure water gushed from the place it lay upon. The hunter built a chapel on the site.

Numerous miracles were later attributed to the icon. Legend has it that once late in the 14th century, when Tartars came to raid the Kursk Region and cut the icon in two, the two halves grew together, leaving a small trace of the break.

In 1920 the Kursk Root icon left Russia as many faithful fled the country following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution that saw the start of a large-scale persecution of Christians. The icon traveled from place to place, including Serbia and Germany, and was finally taken to the United States.