Pelagia Of Ryazan

Pelagia Of Ryazan, also called Pelagia of Zakharovo, was a woman of the Ryazan region, born on 20 October 1890 in the village of Zakharovo and died on 6 December 1966. Some of the faithful honour her as a blessed one, a spiritual elder and a seer, but she has not been canonized by the Orthodox Church; she is venerated by believers, without synodal canonization.

She was born blind, to peasant parents, and her parents died early. For a long time she lived with relatives and in the houses of strangers, on alms, until she found shelter with a believing family with many children, Peter and Anastasia Orlov, who took her in as a daughter. After Anastasia died in 1963, she was taken in 1966 to Moscow by Anastasia's daughter, and there she reposed. Her funeral service took place in the Cathedral of Saints Boris and Gleb in Ryazan, and her grave is in Zakharovo, where a small chapel has been built.

Her fame spread in the 1990s through the publication of prophecies attributed to her, and a place of pilgrimage formed around her grave. Some representatives of the Church have criticised these writings and her veneration, however, and she is not commemorated in the official calendar.