The life of St Maria Skobtsova
Settling among the Russian émigré community in Paris, she was tonsured a nun in 1932 on the understanding that she would not have to withdraw from the world, and gave herself instead to a ministry of hospitality, opening a house that fed and sheltered the poor, the unemployed, and the mentally ill. The priest Dimitri Klepinin was sent to serve as chaplain there in 1939 and became her close partner in this work.
When the German occupation brought the persecution of Jews, Mother Maria and Father Dimitri sheltered refugees, helped rescue children from a stadium where Jews were being held for deportation, and had false baptismal certificates issued to those in danger, at real cost to themselves. In February 1943 the Gestapo arrested them along with her son Yuri and their collaborator Ilya Fondaminsky. Father Dimitri and Yuri died in the camps in 1944. Mother Maria was gassed at Ravensbrück on Holy Saturday, 1945; some witnesses believed she had taken the place of another prisoner. All four were glorified as saints by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 2004.
