St. Maria of Paris

Elizaveta Pilenko was a poet and revolutionary in Russia who fled to Paris after the Revolution. After the death of her daughter she became a nun in 1932 and opened a house on the rue de Lourmel for the homeless, the hungry and the sick. In the Nazi occupation she and her community hid Jews and gave them baptismal certificates to save their lives. She was arrested in 1943 and died in Ravensbrück in March 1945. She was glorified in 2004.

• Feast: July 20 (New Calendar)
• Lived: 1891–1945
• Place: Paris