Mother Maria Skobtsov and Father Lev Gillet

This article by Élisabeth Behr-Sigel focuses on the relationship between Mother Maria Skobtsova and Father Lev Gillet, in the context of Mother Maria's canonization by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Drawing on personal testimony as much as historical study, it traces the deep friendship that united these two figures of French-speaking Orthodoxy, from their meeting in 1928 until Mother Maria's death at Ravensbrück. The author shows how their spiritual journeys converge around a shared vision of compassion, solidarity with the persecuted — notably Jews under the Occupation — and a renewed monasticism rooted in the world. The article's contribution is twofold: it illuminates the genesis of French-speaking Western Orthodoxy and situates Mother Maria's holiness within an ecclesiological and ecumenical perspective that extends beyond the sole framework of the Russian emigration.