Paris, June 4, 2020
Photo: foma.ru
The memory of St. Maria (Skobtsova), known as Mother Maria of Paris, is now honored with a memorial sign in the famous Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Cemetery near Paris, where mostly Russian emigrants are buried.
“By the efforts of Nikita Igorevich and Ksenia Igorevna Krivoshein, the memory of holy Mother Maria SKOBTSOVA, who died a martyr in the Nazi camp in Ravensbrück in 1945, has been immortalized,” writes Konstantin Volkov, the director of the Russian Center for Science and Culture (RCSC).
St. Maria was a Russian noblewoman, poet, nun, philanthropist, and member of the French Resistance during World War II.
The marble slab in her honor reads: “Holy Mother Maria Skobtsova (1891-1945). Nun, poet, artist, resistance fighter. Exterminated by Nazis in Ravensbrück camp. Place of burial unknown.”
As Volkov writes, there is no tomb for Mother Maria, who went to hear death in a gas chamber in place of another prisoner. Her ashes were mixed with those of other prisoners.
The memorial project was supported by the Russian embassy in France and the RCSC in Paris.
Volkov also recalls that in 1985, by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Mother Maria was posthumously awarded the order of the Great Patriotic War, 2nd Degree for her anti-fascist activities.
She was glorified as a saint by act of the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople on January 16, 2004.
On March 31, 2016, Mother Maria Skobtsova Street was inaugurated in Paris. On September 27, 2018, a memorial plaque in St. Maria’s honor was unveiled in Yalta, Crimea.
