Maria of Gatchina

Venerable martyr Maria of Gatchina (born Lydia Alexandrovna Lelyanova, 1874 to April 1932) was a nun of the Russian Orthodox Church from the Josephite movement, paralysed for much of her life, a spiritual counsellor to many people, killed in the prison hospital of Petrograd in 1932. She was canonized on 17 July 2006 by the Russian Orthodox Church, by entry in the Synaxis of the new martyrs and confessors of Russia, on the proposal of the diocese of Saint Petersburg. She is commemorated on 4 April (Old Style) and in the Synaxis of the new martyrs.

Childhood and illness

She was born in 1874 at Saint Petersburg, in the Lelyanov merchant family, rich and honoured, of the first guild. Her father, Alexander Ivanovich, owned a sealing-⁠wax factory; her uncle Paul owned a large fur shop and was a member of the city Duma. At sixteen Lydia fell ill with encephalitis, the consequence of which was Parkinson's disease. Nevertheless she finished the gymnasium, taking the final examinations in a wheelchair. In 1909 she moved to Gatchina, to the house of her elder brother, Vladimir. From 1912 she lay paralysed, but kept her speech. During all her stay at Gatchina a multitude of people of every age and station came to her for counsel and consolation, from unlettered women workers to university professors, from parish priests to bishops; at Gatchina Archbishop Demetrius (Lubimov) visited her, and Metropolitans Benjamin (Kazansky) and Joseph (Petrovykh) gave her their photographs with inscriptions.

The nun

From 1921 a group of devotees gathered around her, called the "John circle", after Saint John of Kronstadt. In 1922 Archimandrite Macarius (Voskresensky) of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra tonsured her a nun, with the blessing of Metropolitan Benjamin of Petrograd, at the metochion of the Pyatogorsk convent, with the name Maria. She looked with disfavour on the "Declaration" of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) and urged not to go to churches where his name was commemorated at the services. The spiritual father of the community gathered around her was the missionary and spiritual writer Archpriest John Smolin, and then, after his death on 25 January 1927, Archpriest Peter Belavsky, a close friend of the leader of the Josephite movement, Archbishop Demetrius (Lubimov) of Gdov.

Martyrdom

In 1932 she was arrested, together with her sister, during an action of "removal of monks and nuns" throughout the country, on the usual charge, among other things for preaching the Gospel. She was put in the hospital of the pre-⁠trial detention house, where she died in 1932, already sentenced to three years of exile. Because of her poor health she was confined in the Alexandrovsky hospital on the Fontanka, supposedly for treatment, but in reality, according to the source's account, she was subjected to tormenting operations and the cutting of tendons; unable to bear the torments, she died. The source gives the day of death as 17 April 1932 and, in the same text, 5 (18 New Style) April, a difference we cannot resolve. She was buried in the Orthodox Smolensk cemetery in Leningrad, where a cross marks the grave.

Veneration

The name of "Mother of Gatchina" had been put on a working list of new martyrs when the canonization of the Russian Church Outside Russia in 1981 was being prepared, which was not by name. On 17 July 2006 she was canonized. On 26 March 2007 her relics were found in the Smolensk cemetery and placed in the cathedral of the Holy Apostle Paul at Gatchina. In April 2016, on the tenth anniversary of the canonization, an exhibition was opened in the museum of the history of Gatchina, and in 2017 the documentary film "Chosen of Christ. Saint Maria of Gatchina" had its premiere. In Saint Petersburg a church in her honour is being built: on 31 October 2020 a pilgrim's cross was set and a molieben served, and on 12 May 2023 Metropolitan Barsanuphius visited the site.