Alaska Native woman, 'everybody's helper,' is Orthodox church's first female North American saint
It was in the dusty streets and modest homes of this remote Alaska Native village that Olga Michael quietly lived her entire life as a midwife and a mother of 13. As the wife of an Orthodox Christian priest, she was a “matushka,” or spiritual mother to many more.
The Yup’ik woman became known in church communities across Alaska for quiet generosity, piety and compassion — particularly as a consoler of women who had suffered from abuse, from miscarriage, from the most intimate of traumas. She could share from her own grief, having lost five children who didn’t live to adulthood.
Her renown spread to a widening circle of devotees after her death from cancer in 1979 at age 63 — through word of mouth and reports of her appearance in sacred dreams and visions, even among people far from Alaska.
Now, after an elaborate ceremony in her village of about 800 people in southwestern Alaska, she is the first female Orthodox saint from North America, officially known as “St. Olga of Kwethluk, Matushka of All Alaska.”
https://apnews.com/article/alaska-native-female-saint-olga-orthodox-church-929adb7b292e518f84928c94fed483a3
My friend, whose late husband was an Orthodox priest in Alaska, said, "I could see that coming," when I told her. She was excited.