Alaska Native woman, ‘everybody’s helper,’ is Orthodox church’s first female North American saint

Alaska’s KWETHLUK (AP) Olga Michael, a 13-year-old mother and midwife, silently spent her entire life in the dirt alleys and humble houses of this isolated Alaska Native hamlet. She was a matushka, or spiritual mother, to numerous others as the spouse of an Orthodox Christian priest.

The Yup Ik woman gained notoriety in Alaskan religious communities for her gentle generosity, piety, and compassion. She was especially well-known for comforting women who had experienced abuse, miscarriages, or the most personal traumas. Having lost five children who never reached adulthood, she could relate to her own sorrow.

Through word of mouth and accounts of her appearance in sacred dreams and visions, even among those outside of Alaska, her fame expanded to a growing circle of devotees following her death from cancer in 1979 at the age of 63.

The Alaskan Yup ik woman Olga Michael, who became the first female North American saint in the Orthodox Church in America, St. Olga of Kwethluk, Matushka of All Alaska, is shown in this family photo from around 1975. (AP via Martha Nicolai)AP

On June 18, 2025, a day before Matushka Olga Michael became the first female Orthodox saint in North America, Toronto deacon Michael Lucius pays a visit to her burial in Kwethluk, Alaska. Olga’s husband, Nicolai Michael, a priest in Kwethluk, is buried in the foreground. (Photo by Mark Thiessen for AP)

Officially known as St. Olga of Kwethluk, Matushka of All Alaska, she is now the first female Orthodox saint from North America during a lavish celebration in her town of roughly 800 people in southwest Alaska.

Helen Larson, her daughter, who went to the ceremony last Thursday with St. Olga’s other living daughters and several grandkids and great-grandchildren, said, “I only thought of her as my mom.” She is amazed by her mother’s widespread influence.

Larson remarked, “This isn’t just my mom anymore.” Everyone’s helper is St. Olga.

Why Olga s gender and ethnicity matter

The veneration of Olga, the first Yup ik saint, is noteworthy for a church dominated solely by male bishops and priests.

Metropolitan Tikhon, the leader of the Orthodox Church in America, stated that the church is frequently perceived as a patriarchal, hierarchical organization. Honoring ladies like St. Olga serves as a reminder that everyone can follow the same path to holiness. All people are called to obey the same commandments, regardless of their gender, age, or financial situation.

According to Carrie Frederick Frost, a professor of religion and culture at Western Washington University who specializes in women and Orthodoxy, St. Olga’s sainthood holds particular significance because many of the women who have been canonized by the church were nuns or ancient martyrs.

It’s really alluring to come here and take part in the celebration of a lay woman who was a mother, grandmother, and had a life that many women have led, Frost remarked.

“I think the church has largely failed to minister to those situations, not entirely but largely,” St. Olga stated, highlighting the significance of her appeal to individuals who have experienced abuse or miscarriage.

North America is home to a number of female Catholic saints. Among them is St. Kateri Tekakwitha, a Mohawk-Algonquin woman from the 17th century who was declared a saint in 2012.

An elaborate canonization ceremony

Hundreds of people traveled from all over to witness her canonization, or glorification as it is known in Orthodoxy.

The choir sung that you are the Yup Ik people’s splendor and a new North Star in the firmament of Christ’s holy Church. Ringing bells, rousing chants, and processions of clergy in black robes, acolytes in golden robes, ladies wearing headscarves, and other devotees in a mixture of dust and incense were all part of the celebrations.

On June 19, 2025, church officials will perform a last ceremony before canonizing Matushka Olga Michael as St. Olga in Kwethluk, Alaska, by moving her relics, or remains, from the church to a nearby graveyard. (Photo by Mark Thiessen/AP)AP

In the sandy streets of Kwethluk, Alaska, on June 19, 2025, worshippers, including an Orthodox priest in a black cassock, make their way to St. Nicholas Orthodox Church for the canonization of St. Olga, the first female Orthodox saint in North America. (Photo by Mark Thiessen for AP)

Some devotees traveled from neighboring Yup ik communities to attend the exaltation. Others traveled by plane from other states and nations to Bethel, the regional center, and then boarded a fleet of motorboats to go about 17 miles up the wide Kuskokwim River, a watershed that is essential to the Yupik people’s traditional subsistence way of life, which is characterized by yearlong cycles of hunting, fishing, and gathering.

At a specially constructed dock, hundreds of people gathered at a Kwethluk riverbank to welcome Metropolitan Tikhon and other bishops. After disembarking, choral chanting and incense started to rise and lasted for hours under the unusually hot sun of Alaska’s long solstice eve.

The sanctuary of Saint Nicholas Orthodox Church, whose golden onion domes rise above the village’s humble one-story dwellings, was crowded with about 150 believers. A choir performed Yup ik hymns, several of which were written especially for the event, while others listened outside:

“Cali nanrararput tanqilria yuucin elpet, nanraramteggen elpet, tanqilria atauwaulria cali Aanaput Arrsamquq,” one person stated. (We respect your sacred memory and exalt you, O holy and righteous mother Olga.)

In Kwethluk, Alaska, on June 19, 2025, Metropolitan Tikhon, the leader of the Orthodox Church in America, swings a censer as he blesses Matushka Olga Michael’s ashes prior to a rite that proclaimed her the first female Orthodox saint in North America. (Photo by Mark Thiessen for AP)

On June 19, 2025, the canonization ceremony of Matushka Olga Michael, the first female Orthodox saint in North America, fills St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in Kwethluk, Alaska, with worshippers. (Photo by Mark Thiessen for AP)

St. Olga was revered in prayers as the comforter of all those injured in heart and spirit, the mother of children taken from their parents, the healer of those who suffered abuse and sorrow, and the quick help of women in difficult labor.

Following the ceremony, worshippers kneeled and crossed themselves as they approached her open casket.

A family s recollections

For the event, Wiz Ruppert of Cranston, Rhode Island, traveled back to her hometown of Kwethluk. At first, it seemed odd that the grandma she spent a large portion of her life with is now a saint, but it also made perfect sense because she was also incredibly giving and compassionate when she was living.

One of St. Olga’s daughters, Larson, also recalls seeing women—and some men—ask her mother for advice. Larson remarked, “I used to read their faces, but she didn’t eavesdrop.”

According to their body language and facial expression, they would appear heavy, Larson added. After talking and drinking tea or coffee, people feel lighter and happier when they leave.

Olga Michael, a Yup ik Alaskan who became St. Olga of Kwethluk, Matushka of All Alaska, the first female North American saint in the Orthodox Church in America, and her husband, Nicolai Michael, are shown in this 1930s family photo. (Source: AP/Helen Lason)AP

What is Orthodoxy s link with Alaska?

Despite the fact that just a small percentage of Alaskans are Orthodox, St. Olga joins an increasing number of saints who have close ties to the state, which is largely considered an Orthodox holy place.

When Russian Orthodox missionaries arrived in what was then czarist territory in the 18th and 19th centuries, Orthodoxy—the second-largest Christian communion in the world—established itself in the modern United States.

The Orthodox Church in America, the now independent progeny of the Russian Orthodox Church, has already canonized a number of Orthodox monks and martyrs having connections to Alaska.

During the canonization event of St. Olga, the first female Orthodox saint in North America, on June 19, 2025, worshippers swarm St. Nicholas Orthodox Church in Kwethluk, Alaska. (Photo by Mark Thiessen for AP)

Two women embrace during the canonization ceremony of St. Olga in Kwethluk, Alaska, on June 19, 2025, which made her the first female Orthodox saint in North America. (Photo by Mark Thiessen for AP)

On June 19, 2025, St. Olga was canonized in her homeland of Kwethluk, Alaska, as worshippers lined up to see her relics. Hundreds of worshippers, from neighboring communities and all around the world, attended the ritual. (Photo by Mark Thiessen/AP)AP

As an example of how the church has permeated some Indigenous societies, St. Olga is the third with Alaska Native ancestry. Alaska Natives make up the majority of the state’s Orthodox priests, who serve over 80 parishes. Kwethluk is home to about a dozen.

A debate, now resolved, over Olga s remains

Olga’s body was exhumed by priests in November 2024. At the moment, pilgrims can adore her shrouded relics in an open coffin at Kwethluk’s church.

There was discussion about relocating St. Olga’s remains to Anchorage as a more convenient site when the bishops of the Orthodox Church in America approved her canonization in 2023.

However, villagers begged bishops to provide them access to their spiritual mother, and bishops complied.

Now Kwethluk, inaccessible by roads, will become one of the American church s most remote pilgrimage destinations. The diocese is working with the village on plans for a new church, hospitality center and cultural center.

Worshipping in your own language

The village provided a taste of such hospitality for the glorification. Pilgrims stayed in a local school or in residents homes amply fed by home-prepared meals of Alaska specialties such as walrus meat and smoked fish.

Nicholai Joekay of nearby Bethel who is named for St. Olga s late husband and grew up attending church events with her family was deeply moved by the glorification.

In church, up until today, we sang hymns of saints and holy people from foreign lands, he said in a written reflection shared with The Associated Press. We have had to learn foreign concepts that are mentioned in the Gospels referencing agricultural terms and concepts from cultures that are difficult for us to understand.

Today, we sang hymns of a pious Yup ik woman who lived a life that we can relate to with words that only we can pronounce properly, he wrote.

Today, he added, God was closer to all of us.

This photo provided by Barbara Winslow shows Olga Michael at Winslow s home in Kwethluk, Alaska, in 1979. (Barbara Winslow via AP)AP

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AP video journalist Mark Thiessen contributed.

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