Orthodox Alaska Part 4: Will Blessed Olga Be The First Female Orthodox Saint Of North America?
Orthodox Christians in North America and around the world already are venerating the Alaskan matriarch for her care and concern for abused women.
KODIAK, Alaska — In Kwethluk village near Bethel, along the Kuskokwim River in a remote southwestern part of this rural state, a small white clapboard Orthodox church is known for an Alaska Native who attended there. Her body in a nearby grave will be exhumed for keepsake as a relic — a practice usually reserved for saints.
Blessed Olga (1916-1979) is expected to become the first female Orthodox saint of North America, possibly as soon as 2023. Born Arrsamquq in the Yup’ik tribe, she’s considered a patron for sexual abuse victims, women who have suffered miscarriages and expecting mothers.
“She’s venerated not just here in Alaska but in the Lower 48 and also abroad now,” said Father Vasily Fisher, the dean of St. Herman’s Orthodox Seminary in Kodiak, Alaska, who was born in Kwethluk. “It’s safe to say it’s very close to her canonization. It’s quite sure.”
Orthodox origins of Blessed Olga
Russian and Siberian frontiersmen working as individual fur traders introduced Orthodoxy to Alaska Natives as early as the late 1600s, baptizing their Native wives and kids in small chapels they built. In 1794, the Russian Orthodox Church established its first mission church in North America on Kodiak Island. Today many in the Aleut, Tlingit and Yup’ik tribes practice Orthodox Christianity, including Blessed Olga’s Yup’ik people. Olga’s ancestors converted to Orthodoxy under the teaching of the Aleut missionary Iakvo Netsvetov (1802-1864), now known as St. Jacob in the present canon of 13 North American saints, according to the journals of Father Netsvetov published by Limestone Press.
An icon at St. Herman's Seminary chapel of the saints of Alaska. Peter the Aleut stands in the middle as an Alaska Native saint and martyr, killed by Jesuits in California, and to the left of Peter is St. Jacob, the Aleut missionary who taught Orthodoxy to Blessed Olga’s Yup’ik ancestors. Photo by Meagan Clark.
Blessed Olga is remembered as a humble wife, mother, midwife and later a priest’s wife who knitted socks, mittens and other warm garments for her entire village, even tanning and sewing leather and fur boots. Her husband established the village’s first post office and opened the only general store before his ordination and eventual promotion to archpriest. The couple traveled north in the summer to hunt and fish and spent winters in the village. Though Olga was poor, she shared her family’s food and possessions generously with others and seemed to intuitively predict when women were pregnant — particularly important in a village without a hospital. She knew grief well, too. She gave birth to 13 children, but only 8 survived to adulthood.
Blessed Olga especially cared for abused women, according to accounts from villagers who knew her. She would invite women into the privacy of a traditional Yup’ik steam bath — a wooden structure with benches surrounding a stone to splash boiling water and create steam — where women would sit naked and could not hide bruises and cuts. The intimacy of the steam bath creates space for meaningful conversation. Olga would extend kindness and healing and lift grief and shame, according to written accounts from her village.
Speaking while sitting in his office at St. Herman’s Seminary in Kodiak, Father Fisher smiled as he showed me an icon of Matushka Olga. “Matushka“ means “mother” in Russian; the title is often used for the wives of priests. Her wrinkled face, with a neutral expression, is wrapped in a white prayer shawl and backlit with a gold leaf halo. A traditional robe with a cross pattern drapes over her shoulders and arms. She carries a scroll that reads, “God can create great beauty from complete desolation.”
Father Fisher holds an icon of Blessed Olga at St. Herman's Seminary in his office in Kodiak, Alaska. Photo by Meagan Clark.
The process of glorification
In the Orthodox Church, holy men and women become recognized or “glorified” as saints in a bottom-up process. Local Orthodox Christians who knew the person first venerate him or her, by creating icons and praying to them, for example. Then as more people venerate the person, local and regional church bodies collect documentation of visions, miracles and testaments to the experiences with the person — while alive or after their death — that point to the person’s holiness or closeness to God.
Currently the Canonization Commission of the Orthodox Church of America is collecting documentation for Blessed Olga’s sainthood to approve a definitive written account of her life, which would then be presented to the Holy Synod. Bishop Daniel Brum of Santa Rosa, auxiliary to the Diocese of San Francisco and the West, sits on the commission and said they have not received any “formal communications concerning miracles,” but miracles are not necessary to glorify a person to sainthood in the Orthodox Church.
And in Blessed Olga’s case, her lack of miracles may be an asset. Orthodox women who venerate Blessed Olga relate to her seemingly mundane, everyday piety. St. Elizabeth Convent, a female Orthodox monastery near Minsk, Belarus, that produces and sells icons of Blessed Olga, posted a blog about her that highlights accounts from relatives that she never yelled at her eight kids. She is nicknamed “Tabitha of the North” — a reference to Tabitha in the New Testament (Acts 9:36-42), who is known for her good works and acts of charity in the early church. When Olga noticed other children who lacked adequate winter clothing, she would give away her own children’s clothing or knit garments for them.
“Personally, I believe she was a holy woman and an excellent representative of Native Alaskan spirituality,” said Bishop Alexei of the Diocese of Sitka and Alaska in an email to ReligionUnplugged.com. “There is a particularly calming and peaceful grace about her and writings referring to her. I believe she was a saint. That being said, it is important for the church to weigh everything carefully and slowly before making such a decision.”
Women claim Olga healed them from sexual trauma
Blessed Olga’s path to sainthood became more widely known with an account in the updated book “Orthodox Alaska,” published by Father Michael Oleska, a priest originally from Pennsylvania who has worked in Alaska for more than four decades. For many years, he served as a priest in Yup’ik villages with his Yup’ik wife and children. He knew Blessed Olga before she died.
“I’ve always thought if there is anyone I’ve known in my lifetime who would be glorified a saint, it would be Matuskha Olga,” Oleska told ReligionUnplugged.com in Eagle River, Alaska.
Father Michael Oleska at the St. James House of St. John Orthodox Cathedral in Eagle River, Alaska. Photo by Meagan Clark.
In 1994, he received a letter from a woman in Ossining, New York, who described experiencing an intense flashback to her childhood sexual abuse one day while praying. She prayed to Mary the mother of God to help her and began having a vision or dream. In a birch forest, Mary walked past the woman and gestured for her to follow another woman into a meadow and a house built into a small hill. Inside the house, lit by stone bowl lamps, the woman lay down on a bed of moss, and the mystery woman began to gently touch her as if she were about to give birth, though she wasn’t pregnant. The woman said she felt the darkness and years of physical and emotional abuse leave her body.
In the dream or vision according to the letter, the two women then went outside and drank “tundra” tea under a night sky illuminated by the Northern Lights. That’s when the mystery woman spoke, pointing to the heavens and saying, “This is a sign from God of his ability to create great beauty where there had been only darkness and desolation.”
“Who are you?” the woman shouted — to which she muttered something indecipherable and “Olga.”
The woman from New York wasn’t Orthodox at the time and didn’t recognize the Native woman but told her Greek Orthodox therapist about the vision. The therapist found an icon of St. Olga, the princess of Kiev and a founder of Russian Orthodoxy, before realizing that she must be referring to Blessed Olga of Alaska. The therapist had recently read “Orthodox Alaska.”
The woman who had the vision then wrote a letter to Blessed Olga’s family asking for a photograph of Olga to identify her. They sent back a family photo with several other Yup’ik elders, and the woman identified Olga immediately.
The photo that Blessed Olga's family sent to a woman for identification. She correctly identified Olga as the woman in the dark blue jacket. The priest on her left is her husband.
Today the woman is a convert to Orthodoxy and a generous donor to St. Herman’s seminary in Kodiak. She insists on remaining anonymous from the public to not draw attention to herself but wants to spread awareness about Blessed Olga. She has even traveled to Kodiak to study iconography and paint icons of Blessed Olga.
The church canonization committee has collected several other stories of Blessed Olga’s appearance or intercessions. A popular one is that 10 women from the same Orthodox parish in Victoria, Canada, all miscarried babies in one summer. After their priest introduced them to Blessed Olga, they prayed daily for her help, and the following year all of the women gave birth to healthy babies.
Already an icon
In some churches, Blessed Olga has already been added to the canon of North American saints. In a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland, Holy Cross Orthodox Church, a convert-majority congregation that was founded in part by the popular Orthodox author and priest’s wife Frederica Mathewes-Green, has a wall mural dedicated to American saints that includes Blessed Olga.
“When I heard about her … even though she wasn’t a saint, I just knew immediately I wanted her to be my patron saint,” said Cynthia Sidell, 75, a convert to Orthodoxy after attending Lutheran and Presbyterian churches. New Orthodox Christians choose a saint as their patron, regarded as a person’s heavenly advocate.
A wall at Holy Cross Orthodox Church near Baltimore, Maryland depicts the North American saints, including even Blessed Olga before she has been recognized officially as a saint. Photo by Meagan Clark.
“The fact that she reached out to women in her community,” Sidell said, “I really clung to that I think.”
Sidell commissioned an iconographer to paint an icon of Blessed Olga and has given it temporarily to her daughter-in-law, who is pregnant. She now prays in front of an icon of Blessed Olga printed from her computer.
“When I stand in front of that icon, I feel great,” she said. “I feel very, very close to her. She certainly didn’t have an easy life. But the other thing I love about her is that she reached out to other people even beyond her own village to help people in need with the work of her hands.”
Sidell formed a “knitting guild” at her parish, which Mathewes-Greene named after Blessed Olga. The members would meet to knit, crochet or sew hats, socks, mittens and other items for the homeless, for the poor in Romania and other groups. As the women worked with their hands, they prayed for God to bless the work and let it benefit the person who receives it. Sometimes the guild would knit prayer shawls. The group dwindled over time, but now young women in the church want to revive it.
Once the Canonization Commission finalizes a written account of Blessed Olga’s life, the commission will publicly request testimonies of healing by Olga, open to anyone who has a story to share. These accounts will be investigated and tested by the church before the Holy Synod will vote on whether to recognize Blessed Olga as the first female North American saint.
Meagan Clark is the managing editor of ReligionUnplugged.com. She has reported for Newsweek, International Business Times, Dallas Morning News, Religion News Service and several other outlets including in India. She is a 2024 Master’s Candidate in Religion and Journalism from New York University, has a Master’s in Religion and Public Life from Harvard Divinity School (‘22) and is a board member of the Associated Church Press. Follow her on Twitter @Meagan_Salia.
Earlier in this Collection
-
While less than 1% of Americans identify as Orthodox Christians, 5% of Alaskans identified as Orthodox in 2014, according to Pew Research. And while the number of regular attendees at Eastern Orthodox churches in the U.S. has declined 14% from 2010 to 2020, the number of parishes grew 3% over the same decade, according to the latest data in the 2020 Census of Orthodox Christian Churches.
-
Several young Orthodox converts who live at the St. James House, a self-directed program for young Orthodox adults, kept asking me during my visit last November if I had met Joe, the beekeeper. From what I had gathered, this guy named Joseph “Joe” Dunham, 68, was a living legend of the Eagle River community. He sounded quirky. I had to meet him.
-
The arrival of St. Herman and a group of eight monks on this island on Sept. 24, 1794, planted a seed for the Orthodox Church on the continent. Since then, Alaska has been a spiritual cradle of Orthodox Christianity in North America.
Up Next in this Collection
-
Orthodox Christians in North America and around the world already are venerating the Alaskan matriarch for her care and concern for abused women.
-
From the beginning of their journey into the Orthodox faith, Meghan and Michael Jones were metaphysically connected to Alaska. But their sense of calling to spread the gospel, expand the church and launch socially redemptive initiatives eventually led the couple and their four children to Fiji.