Lyubushka Lazareva

Lyubushka Lazareva, whose baptismal name was Lyubov Ivanovna, was a Russian elder, born in 1912 and reposed in 1997, venerated by the faithful as a blessed one. The Russian Church has not canonized her, and the sources say plainly that today she is not a canonized saint.

She was born in a village of the Kaluga governorate, Kolodezi, near the town of Sukhinichi. Her parents, Ivan and Evdokia Lazarev, were very devout. Her father served as churchwarden in the village church, and her mother looked after the children. After their death she moved to the city to her elder brother and, according to the source, from 1923 worked in Petrograd at the Red Triangle factory, then at a linen factory. The years do not fit easily with her birth date.

She was placed in a psychiatric hospital, from which she escaped, and then lived without papers, spending nights in forests, in cemeteries and with strangers. She wandered, feigning folly for Christ. She spent several years in the Kuban, then returned to Leningrad. She lived in the settlement of Vyritsa, at first with no home, then in the house of a local woman, with whom, from 1983, she moved to Susanino.

From the end of 1995 she set out on a pilgrimage to the Nikolo-⁠Shartomsky monastery in the Ivanovo region, and in 1997 to the Kazan monastery in Vyshny Volochyok in the Tver region, where she reposed after an illness. Already in her life the faithful venerated her as a blessed one, and many came to her for spiritual counsel. Among her spiritual guides are named Venerable Seraphim of Vyritsa and Archimandrite Naum of the Trinity-⁠Saint Sergius Lavra. Over her grave, at the Kazan convent in Vyshny Volochyok, a chapel has been built, and in Susanino, near the church, stands "Lyubushka's house", with a prayer room.