Orthodox Saint. Born Elizaveta Karavayeva Pilenko into the Russian Aristocracy. She transformed from a Russian noblewoman to a French resistance worker during World War II. Early in life she embraced atheism. She became a poet and involved in a radical intellectual life. She converted to Catholicism in 1913. Though being attracted to Christianity she was a member of the Bolshevik movement. At one point she became Mayor of Anapa in South Russian where she had moved with her daughter. The White Communist Party put her on trial but the Judge, Dimitri Skobtov, who had been her former teacher set her free. They would later marry. Because of the changing political climate in Russia they moved, eventually arriving in Paris in 1923. Coming under the influence of the French Catholic authorities she received permission from her husband Daniel Skobtov to become a nun. Her only request of the church was to not be confined to a convent and secluded from the world but to live in central Paris where she could make her home. It became a place for refugees and the needy. As World War II approached many Jews began to appear on her doorstep, requesting Baptismal certificates. The local priest, Father Dimitri, would gladly sign. The house eventually was closed and Mother Marie was arrested by the Gestapo, along with a number of her family and workers. She was sent to the Ravensbruck Concentration camp where she would die on Holy Saturday, 1 April 1945, in the gas chambers. It is believed that she took the place of a Jewish woman. For her efforts in saving Jews during the Holocaust she was recognized in 1985 as one of "The Righteous Among the Nations" at the Yad Vashem center in Jerusalem, Israel. Mother Maria was glorified by act of the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Eastern Orthodox Church on January 16, 2004. The glorification of Mother Maria, together with Fr. Dimitri, Yuri, and Ilya Fondaminsky took place at the Cathedral of Saint Alexander Nevsky in Paris on May 1 and 2, 2004. Their feast day is July 20. Her life is dramatized in a Soviet film starring Lyudmila Kasatkina. According to Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) of Sourozh: "Mother Maria is a saint of our day and for our day; a woman of flesh and blood possessed by the love of God, who stood face to face with the problems of this century."