5 Dollars - Elizabeth II Virgin of Kazan

The Virgin of Kazan icon holds one of the stranger geopolitical histories of any religious object — it disappeared from Kazan in 1904, resurfaced in the United States via a series of private sales, was purchased by the Catholic Church in 1970, and finally transferred to the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate by Pope John Paul II in 2004, five years before this coin was issued. Cook Islands has issued commemoratives under its own authority since 1972, using the series largely as a vehicle for thematic collector pieces with no domestic circulation intent.