Saint of the Week: Mother Maria Skobtsova
7/23/2025
Mother Maria Skobtsova
Monastic and Martyr
1891 – 1945
Maria Skobtsova (20 Dec 1891–31 Mar 1945), was a Russian noblewoman, poet, nun, and member of the French Resistance during World War II. She was born Elizaveta Pilenko to an aristocratic family in Riga, Latvia. While a teenager, her father died and she embraced atheism. When her family moved to St. Petersburg in 1906, Maria’s involvement in radical intellectual circles began. In 1910, she married Dmitriy Kuz'min-Karavaev, an avowed Bolshevik. She was active in extremist literary circles and became a prolific poet. By 1913, after divorcing Dimitriy, she began to be Kuzmin drawn back to Christianity after a reflecting on a book that addressed the humanity of Christ. Relocating to southern Russia with daughter Gaiana, her religious devotion increased. Following the 1918 Bolshevik Revolution, she was elected deputy mayor of Anapa, Russia. When the anti-communist White Army seized the town, its mayor fled, leaving her in charge. Put on trial for being a Bolshevik, the judge, Daniel Skobtsova, was a former teachers and acquitted her. The two subsequently fell in love and married. But political tides again shifted on Elizaveta. In 1923, she, Daniel, Gaiana, and her mother fled to Paris. She immersed herself in theological studies and social work, but her marriage unraveled. Her work caught the bishop’s attention, and he persuaded her to take vows as a nun. She did so only after being assured she would not have to live in a monastery, secluded from the world. In 1932, she received an ecclesiastical divorce, freeing her to take her vows. She took the name Maria and made a rental in Paris her "convent.“ With Fr. Dmitri Klepinin providing top cover, it was an open door to refugees, the needy and the lonely, as well as a center for intellectual and theological discussion--elements Maria believed went hand-in-hand. After France fell in 1940, Jews approaching the house asking for baptismal certificates and Father Dimitri provided them, helping many to flee as well. Eventually, the Gestapo closed the house and arrested Maria, her family, and the priest. Dimitri and her son Yuri died at the Dora concentration camp. Mother Maria was sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp where, on Holy Saturday 1945, she was among a group of internees murdered in the gas chamber. The Eastern Orthodox Church canonized her as a saint on 16 Jan 2004.
