New Martyrs of Paris

The New Martyrs of Paris are Mother Maria Skobtsova and those with her, Orthodox Christians of Paris who died at the hands of the Nazis during the Second World War. They were glorified by act of the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate on 16 January 2004, and the glorification of Mother Maria, Father Dimitri Klepinin, Yuri Skobtsov and Ilya Fondaminsky took place at the Cathedral of Saint Alexander Nevsky in Paris on 1 and 2 May 2004.

Mother Maria was born in 1891 in Riga, named Elizaveta Pilenko, to an aristocratic family. After her father's death in her youth she became an atheist and entered radical intellectual circles in Saint Petersburg, where she wrote poetry; her first book of verse was Scythian Shards. She was gradually drawn back to Christianity. After the revolution she was elected deputy mayor and then mayor of Anapa in southern Russia; tried by the White Army as a Bolshevik, she was acquitted by the judge Daniil Skobtsov, a former teacher of hers, whom she married. They fled the country, through Georgia and Yugoslavia, and reached Paris in 1923. There she gave herself to theological study and social work; after the death of her daughter Anastasia in 1926 and the breakdown of her marriage, she took monastic vows in 1932 with the name Maria, on the assurance that she would not have to live secluded in a monastery. Her confessor was Father Sergei Bulgakov, and later Father Dimitri Klepinin came as chaplain of the house.

Mother Maria made a rented house in Paris her "convent", with an open door for refugees, the needy and the lonely, and also a center of theological discussion, uniting service to the poor with theology. After the fall of France in 1940, Jews began coming to the house asking for baptismal certificates, which Father Dimitri provided; many found shelter and were helped to flee the country. The house was closed, and Mother Maria, Father Dimitri, her son Yuri and her mother Sophia were arrested by the Gestapo. Father Dimitri and Yuri died in the camp at Dora. Mother Maria was sent to Ravensbrück, where on Holy Saturday, 31 March 1945, she was sent to the gas chamber. She was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous among the Nations. Their day of commemoration is 20 July, by the New Calendar.