About the icon:
 
Panagia Kassopita commemorated on May 8.
Every year on the 8th of May, everyone in Corfu celebrates her supernatural miracle of giving eyes to an innocent young man, Stefanos, who was blinded by an unfair judgment of the lord of the place.
The Church of Our Lady of Kassopita is located in the village of Kassiopi, on the northwestern coast of the island. The village is coastal and has preserved its old fishing color. It is characterized by mainly rocky beaches with crystal clear waters. In Roman times it was a prosperous village, as it was on the sea route to Italy and the rest of the Mediterranean. Today it maintains its charm, both in its center and in its picturesque port, the two bays that surround it with the beaches separated by a headland and the ruins of a Byzantine castle.
The miracle of Panagia Kassopita "upon the unjustly blinded Stephen and strangely baptized", as the synaxarist writes, took place between the years 1534-1537, with a more likely date in 1536. The importance of this miracle lies in the fact of the baptism", i.e. of the placement of new eyes in Stephanos. Only our Lord as our Creator and Molder from clay made eyes in the blind man of the Gospel. It is one thing to put new eyes in the blind and another to open the eyes of the blind. The uniqueness of the miracle of this Virgin led many pilgrims of the Holy Land from the west to Kassiopi during the Middle Ages, to receive the blessing of our Kassopita.
The story of the miracle has been recorded by the Zakynthian learned monk, Pachomios Roussanos (1509-1553) and is as follows:
In then Venetian-occupied Corfu, an honest young man, Stefanos, was returning to his village from the city. On the road he met another group of children and together they continued their journey. At one point they saw in the distance some other young men carrying freshly ground flour, which they had taken from the mill. Stefano's fellow travelers were tempted to steal the flour despite his strong reaction. They, without listening to anyone, attacked the unsuspecting children, beat them and took their sacks of flour. Together with their prey they disappeared, so as not to be noticed and searched for. Stefanos, being innocent, continued on his way. The abused children fearfully recounted the events at home, the parents notified the commander and he immediately sent soldiers to arrest the thieves. However, they had disappeared, so they arrested the innocent Stefanos as a suspect. They did not believe his apology and condemned him to a great punishment. They suggested either cutting off both of his hands or gouging out his eyes.
Stefanos, faced with this tough dilemma, chose in his opinion "no eyes". He preferred to have his eyes removed and his hands left, so that even a blind man could do some manual work. After the sentence was carried out, the eyes were delivered to him in a small glass case.
With pain in his soul, his mother, having no other choice, led him to beg in central parts of the city of Corfu, in order to secure the necessities to live. However, the inhabitants of the city, knowing the facts, considered him a thief, avoided him and disapproved of him. Begging in the villages followed. Returning from village to village on the 7th of May, the unfortunates arrived in Kassiopi. There, they took refuge in the historic Church of Panagia Cassiopeia and Kassopitaras, and asked, if possible, to let them spend the night there, since they had neither shelter nor money.
A monk lived in the Temple, who had the responsibility and supervision of it. In fact, it is mentioned that the Temple also functioned as a Monastery for some years. He sympathized with the mother's request seeing the tragic situation of her young child.
The mother of Stefanos all the time inside the Church with tears of supplication begged Our Lady, to heal her son. They lay down to sleep with the child groaning in pain and sighing for the calamity that befell him, and the mother doing what she could to relieve him. Their toil and pain slowly brought them sleep. In the middle of the night, the innocent Stefanos felt two hands touch him on the face, at the points of the eyes where only the eye sockets were left without eyes. Immediately he jumped up finding that he could see, that he had eyes again. Before him he saw a woman bright as the sun and the Temple flooded with light. The woman immediately disappeared, but the light of the Temple was preserved, as were the lamps, which were lit without human intervention. Stefanos, before he could realize the fact, thought he was seeing a nice dream. He put his hands over his eyes and couldn't believe what had actually happened to him. He immediately woke his mother, it being midnight, happily reporting the event and describing the Temple. She, mentally exhausted, thought that her son was hallucinating from the pain.
– No, mother, I'm not hallucinating, he told her. A brilliant woman came, caressed me and gave me new eyes. It must have been the Lady of this Temple, our Virgin Mary!
When the mother realized the happy event, she and her son began to sing and thank God and the Virgin Mary for this exquisite, unique miracle of placing eyes in empty sockets.
With the commotion created by their joyful voices, the monk also woke up, who began to scold them. But when he realized what had happened he too fell on his knees and began to pray with them. The next morning the miracle spread and all the people were amazed and glorified God and His merciful mother, Our Lady, Stefanos and his mother were taken by the local authorities to the city, where the miracle was certified. The executioner assured that he had carried out the order perfectly and there was a presumption, the two eyes kept in the glass box. In fact, while the young man's eyes were black, the ones Our Lady gave him were blue.
The great Cretan iconographer, Theodoros Poulakis (1622-1692), has given an excellent illustration of the miracle. In the year 1670, he was saved in a storm by Kassopitra Theotokos herself and as a sign of gratitude he made her icon.
Today, in addition to the pilgrimage of Kassiopi, there is also a Monastery of the same name of Kassopita in the city of Corfu, and Churches dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Kassopita are also preserved in Arta, in Himarra of Northern Epirus and in Gallipoli, Italy, where the Christian Sisterhood of Santa Maria di Cassopo is housed , as they call Cassopitra in Italian.