Anastasia of Kiev

Venerable Anastasia of Kiev, in the world Grand Duchess Alexandra Petrovna of Russia, was the wife of a grand duke of the imperial family, then founder of the Pokrovsky Convent in Kiev and a nun. She was born in Saint Petersburg on 2 June 1838 (new style) and fell asleep in the Lord at Kiev in April 1900. The Church remembers her for a life given to the sick and the poor.

Childhood and marriage

Alexandra was the eldest of the eight children of Duke Peter of Oldenburg and Princess Therese of Nassau-⁠Weilburg. Her father was the son of Grand Duchess Catherine Pavlovna, a daughter of Tsar Paul I, so the family was closely tied to the Romanov dynasty. Her parents, lovers of art and generous benefactors, raised her in a quiet home away from the bustle of the court, taught her languages, music, painting and riding, and awakened in her a love of serving those in need. She was drawn to medicine, to Russian history and to the problems of the poor.

In 1855 she became engaged to Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, third son of Tsar Nicholas I, and they were married on 6 February 1856 at Peterhof. Raised in the Lutheran church, Alexandra converted to Orthodoxy at the beginning of 1856 and took the name Alexandra Petrovna. They had two sons, Nicholas (1856-1929) and Peter (1864-1931). The marriage had been arranged by their families in the hope that she would have a good influence on her husband, but it was unhappy. Alexandra was plain, serious, modestly dressed and averse to society life.

Works of mercy

From the early years of her marriage she gave herself to charity: she opened a hospital, an outpatient clinic, a home for orphan girls and a school for nurses in Saint Petersburg, and in 1865 she founded a training institute for nurses. She also founded the Pokrovsky community of sisters of mercy, which grew into a large hospital for the poor.

In that same year, 1865, her husband began a liaison with a ballerina and formed a second family. The separation became a fact, and in 1879 he drove her from their home. A fall from a carriage badly injured her spine and left her almost paralyzed. In 1880 Tsar Alexander II, her brother-⁠in-⁠law, sent her abroad on the pretext of medical treatment; the following year, with the permission of Tsar Alexander III, she settled in Kiev.

In Kiev

In Kiev she acquired land and, in 1889, founded the Pokrovsky Convent, a community of nuns who served as nurses and kept their own hospital, where the poor were treated free of charge. The icon of the Mother of God of Pochaev, given to her father by the monks of the Pochaev Lavra, became one of the chief treasures of the convent. After several operations and constant prayer, she was able to walk again.

The convent held a free pharmacy and clinic, receiving up to five hundred patients a day, a hospital for women, a school for girls, workshops, a house for pilgrims, and shelters for widows, orphans, incurable women and the blind. Its medical institutions kept pace with the science of the day, with the first X-⁠ray machine in Kiev, and among its doctors was Danylo Zabolotny. Mother Alexandra, who had once been assistant to the famed Sergey Botkin, helped even at surgical operations and cared for infectious patients. The people called her "Mother the Great."

She took monastic vows in secret under the name Anastasia and hid it until her death. Sources say this happened in 1889, or after the death of her husband on 13 April 1891. In 1892 she underwent a successful operation for breast cancer. She fell asleep in the Lord in the convent she had founded, in 1900.

Veneration

On 24 November 2009 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) numbered her among the venerable saints, as a locally venerated saint of the diocese of Kiev. Her convent in Kiev keeps the memory of her mercy.