Elizabeth Gallitzin

Sister Yelizaveta Alexeyevna Golitsyna (also Elizabeth Gallitzin) (22 February 1797 in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire – 26 November 1844 in Louisiana, United States of America) was a Russian noble and Catholic nun, who converted from Russian Orthodoxy.

Biography

Yelizaveta Golitsyna was born 22 February 1797 in Saint Petersburg, Russia to the family of Prince Alexei Andreevich Golitsyn and Princess Alexandra Golitsyna. She was baptized and brought up in the Russian Orthodox Church.

When she was 15, she learned that her mother and her aunt converted to Catholicism (the aunt, a revert to the faith, was the mother of future Catholic priest Demetrius Gallitzin). Outraged by this "betrayal," Golitsyna vowed never to change her religion, but over the next four years, her rejection of Catholicism was replaced by interest and desire to know more. Eventually, Yelizaveta also joined the Catholic Church. A school was opened at the corner of Houston and Mulberry streets, in Manhattan, then in Astoria, and finally at Manhattanville. During her stay in New York, Mother Gallitzin was a guest of the Parmentier family, noted New York philanthropists, at their Bridge Street mansion in Brooklyn. In 1842 Mme. Gallitzin founded establishments in the Pottawattamie missions, and at McSherrystown, Maryland.

Mother Elizabeth died of yellow fever, at the age of 47, on 26 November 1844 in New Orleans, Louisiana.