Marfa of Tsaritsyn

Blessed Martha of Tsaritsyn was a fool for Christ in Tsaritsyn (now Volgograd), venerated as a saint by many Orthodox believers of the Volgograd region. She has not been canonized by the Orthodox Church: the diocese of Volgograd is only collecting materials for a possible official canonization.

She was born in 1880, the only child of a well-⁠to-⁠do family of Tsaritsyn named Medvedsky. Her name before she took up her calling is not known. She studied at one of the city's gymnasia and then went on pilgrimage to Saint John of Kronstadt in Saint Petersburg. With his blessing she took on the labour of foolishness for Christ's sake and received the name Martha. She lived this way for some time in Petersburg, and on returning to Tsaritsyn she had to leave her parents' home, because of their opposition to her new way of life.

In Tsaritsyn she became widely known as a seer and a healer. The tales of her life, however, have also been filled with plain inventions. Among them, the most widespread is the story of a visit of the empress Alexandra Feodorovna to Martha, when the blessed one supposedly foretold the murder of the Romanov family. In reality the empress was never in Tsaritsyn.

Martha died in 1925, at about the age of forty-⁠five. It is said that before her death she foretold that she would be buried three times, and so it came about. First her body was buried on the grounds of the Holy Spirit monastery. After the monastery was closed, the grave was moved to the cemetery beside the church of Saint Alexis, and after the war the Alexeevsky cemetery was abolished and the grave moved to the Dimitrievsky cemetery, where it remains today.

Believers visit her grave at the Dimitrievsky cemetery with devotion, where they buy rusks and take sand and earth, which they consider a help in illness. Every week the priests of the cemetery church serve memorial prayers at the grave.