Olga of Moscow

Blessed Olga of Moscow was a blessed elder of the Russian Church in the Moscow region, born in 1871 and fell asleep in 1973. Our source does not say that she has been canonized; it shows only that her grave has become a place of pilgrimage.

She was born in 1871 in the village of Inshino, in the Moscow governorate (now the urban district of Yegoryevsk, Moscow region), into a large peasant family, Ivan and Agrippina Lozhkin. In her teenage years, on her father's advice, she entered the Nikitsky monastery at Kashira as a novice, where she did various household works. Then she received monastic tonsure with the name Moisia. In 1919, fearing the closing of the monastery, the nuns turned it into a labour cooperative, but in the 1920s the monastery was closed anyway. After the closing of the monastery Moisia lived for a time in her native village, with her sister Anna (the parental house had burned down), then went to Moscow. In all those years she did not take off the monastic habit, faithfully attended the churches of Moscow, and was often invited to read the Psalter for the dead. Several times she was arrested, but after a short stay in prison was released. In the post-⁠war years the nun Moisia was secretly tonsured into the schema, with the name Olga, by Father Ambrose Balabanovsky.

After the elder Olga began to live as a fool for Christ, she was placed in a psychiatric hospital. Her cell attendant Akilina Nikitichna Rybalko (1911 to 2000) managed to get her out of the hospital by obtaining guardianship over her. Blessed Olga began to receive people openly at home. To the blessed elder came for advice and help not only lay people but monks, seminarians and priests. Shortly before her death Olga fell ill. She died on 23 January 1973 and was buried in Moscow at the Kalitnikovskoe cemetery. The grave of the blessed elder Olga became a place of pilgrimage for many Orthodox people.