Martyred Orthodox Queen's Relics to Come Home - Republic of Georgia

Georgia and India have reached an agreement on the return of Queen St.Ketevan of Kakheti's relics to Georgia.The relics will be loaned to Georgia for a period of six months,during which the Georgian people will have several opportunities to venerate them.The Georgian Orthodox Queen of Kakheti in Eastern Georgia died on 13 September,1624 in Persia at the behest of the Muslim Savafid Empire's regent Shah Abbas,who,coveting her family's throne,had her taken hostage and then publicly tortured to death when she refused to convert to Islam.*
Catholic Augustinian friars witnessed the barbaric act and managed to spirit some of her relics off from Istfahan to their complex at Monte Santo in Old Goa,Western India for safekeeping.They were excavated from a stone sarcophagus,after more than a decade of work,by the Archeological Survey of India in 2004 and subsequently identified by DNA analysis in 2013.*
This will be a major event in Georgia,a former Soviet Republic in the Caucasus Mountains,and there will be international conferences there about the saint and her times.She is seen as one who stood up for the Orthodox faith and culture of Georgia.