Elizaveta Fedorovna, the true saint of the Romanovs
Commemorating one hundred years since the massacre of the tsar and his family, many pilgrims focused especially on the relics of the Aunt of Tsar Nicholas II. She was a descendant of Elisabeth of Thuringia. Married to Prince Sergei Aleksandrovich, from Lutheran she became Orthodox. A saint not only of charity, but also of ecumenism and the multicultural world.
Moscow (AsiaNews) - The events marking the centenary of Romanov's slaughter in Yekaterinburg ended on 21 July. They commemorated the murder of Nicholas II, his family and the people in his service, on the night between July 16 and 17 in the Ipatev cellar, and the execution of the other members of the Russian imperial family on July 18 in Alapaev, near Ekaterinburg itself. The solemn celebrations were presided over by the Patriarch of Moscow, Kirill (Gundjaev), who, in honor of the Tsar Martyr, gathered the entire Synod of Russian Orthodox bishops.
The people fervently participated in the liturgies and the nocturnal pilgrimage of more than 10 km from the place of the shooting to that of the burial, but above all they crowded in intense prayers and devotions before the remains of an aunt of the tsar, Princess Elizaveta Fedorovna, the "True saint" of the imperial family.
It is estimated that at least 60 thousand people went to kiss the reliquary that houses the body of Saint Elizaveta in the church of Alapaev. At the end of the demonstrations, the sacred relic, which was carried by the patriarch Kirill himself, was returned to the monastery of Martha and Mary in Moscow, the seat of the religious congregation founded by the saint of the Romanovs.
Princess Elizaveta, known throughout Russia for her charitable works, was executed the day after the death of her emperor nephew, along with four other members of the family and the faithful nun Varvara, her assistant in the works of mercy. The victims were thrown still alive in the quarry of an iron mine in Alapaev, on the slopes of the Urals.
Born in Germany in Darmstadt in 1861 Elisabeth Alexandra Luise von Hessen-Darmstadt (her family called her Ella), she had married the great prince Sergei Aleksandrovich, the fifth son of Tsar Alexander II and uncle of Nicholas II.
A member and then president of the Imperial Orthodox Society of Palestine, that oversaw Russian pilgrimages to the Holy Land, Elizabeth was also an honorary member of the Kazan Theological Academy, dedicated to missionary studies. She founded the Marta and Maria hospice in Moscow, where she later installed a new religious congregation, to care for the homeless and the needy of the historic Russian capital.
She was called at birth after St. Elizabeth of Hungary and Thuringia, the progenitor of the House of Hesse, who acted as a model for the whole life of the young princess. On her marriage in 1884 she maintained the Lutheran faith, only to later adhere to orthodoxy in 1891, following a deeper study of the principles of Eastern Christianity. Among the many German members of the imperial family, she was praised for her perfect knowledge of the Russian language, which she spoke without accent. She can therefore be considered a saint not only of charity, but also of ecumenism in a multicultural world.
In 1981 Elizabeth was proclaimed a saint by the Russian Church abroad, linked to the memory of the Tsarist period, and in 1992 she was canonized in the first post-communist Synod, presided over by Patriarch Aleksij II (Ridiger). In the tsarist euphoria of the last weeks, the saint princess stands out as a figure of a truly universal Russia and Christianity.
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