09 — Legacy and Veneration

The Church’s reception of Mother Maria and her wide influence beyond it. This section covers the glorification of 2004 by the Ecumenical Patriarchate and her feast, and offers a sober assessment of her legacy — the “saint of the open door,” a model of social and engaged Christianity — held together honestly with the contested character of her reception.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Paris émigré; glorified by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, 2004)

Mother Maria’s afterlife has two faces that must be held together. She is a glorified saint of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, venerated and invoked; and she is a widely influential figure — read, painted, invoked as a patron of social Christianity and of the Church’s response to the Holocaust — whose reception is nonetheless not universal within Orthodoxy and remains, in the honest sense, contested. This section presents both faces without collapsing either.

Section Contents

• Glorification 2004 — the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s act of 16 January 2004 and the glorification of the four in Paris; the feast; the state of the reception
• Legacy and Assessment — her wide influence as the “saint of the open door”; social and engaged Christianity; her place in the memory of the Holocaust; and a sober assessment holding the influence together with the contested reception

See Also

• The Contested Saint — Methodology — the both-sides treatment that this section presupposes
• What the Church Received — the theology of the reception
• Their Witness — the martyrdom at the root of the veneration