St. Olga of Kiev
Source: Catholicsaints.info
Also known as
• Helena
• Helga
• Olga Prekrasa
• Olga the Beauty
• Olha
Memorial
• 11 July
Profile
First Christian queen of Ukraine. Married to Igor I, duke of Kiev c.903. She ruled Kievan Rus after Igor’s assassination in 945. Following her conversion and baptism in 957 in Constantinople, when she took the name Helena, she tried to introduce Christianity to the Ukraine on a wide scale, but failed. When her son Sviatoslav reached adulthood, she handed the throne to him, c.963. Grandmother of Saint Vladimir, great-grandmother of Saint Boris and Saint Gleb.
Born
• 879 at Pskov, Russia
Died
• 11 July 969 in Kiev, Ukraine of natural causes
• relics found to be incorrupt, and translated to the Church of the Tithes in Kiev, the first time relics were displayed in Rus-Ukraine
• relics lost forever in the early 18th century
Patronage
• converts
• widows