St Maria of Paris

Elizaveta Pilenko, born in Riga, was a poet of the St Petersburg literary world, twice married, and briefly a revolutionary town mayor before the emigration carried her to Paris. There, after the death of a daughter, she gave herself wholly to the destitute. Tonsured a nun in 1932 with the name Maria, she refused a conventional convent, insisting her monastery was 'the whole world.' Her house at rue de Lourmel became a refuge with a soup kitchen and chapel, serving the unemployed, the mentally ill, and refugees. Under the Nazi occupation she and her chaplain, Fr Dimitri Klepinin, hid Jews and supplied false baptismal certificates; both were arrested in 1943. Fr Dimitri died at Dora, her son Yuri with him; Maria was gassed at Ravensbrück on 31 March 1945, Holy Saturday eve, according to some accounts taking the place of another prisoner. She was canonized with her companions in 2004.