"A lie told often enough, becomes the truth," said Vladimir Lenin. In May of 1922, he ordered that all priests should be murdered and then promptly had a stroke, the first of three. Per his word, the Communists began a cleansing operation in Soviet Russia that included killing all the clergy of every denomination, all the laity of faith, and then burning down all churches. In the Soviet Socialist Republic, it was against the law to believe in God.

They saved one last church because of a legend, the annual miracle inside the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi on the Ilava. The Diamond Teardrop formed in the eye of the Virgin Mother's face high up on the stained glass windows every Easter Sunday and was a known fact throughout the Catholic world. It was all an illusion that forced the murdering pyromaniacs to look up instead of down, caused them to film that last Mass, hear the gospel and see the miracle for themselves. After the last Mass, the vandals removed the entire section of glass windows intact before they burned down the church with two priests chained inside their confessional, thus starting the legend of Pocomaxa, 'The Ice Pick Assassin,' who waged a personal vendetta against the Communists from that time on.

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