Below we publish an article by Abbess Euphrosinia (Molchanova) about the life journey of Mother Angelina, the 6th Abbess of the Lesna Convent in France:
“You always cared for others”
Last night [May 16, 2025], Schema Abbess Angelina (Kholmova), former abbess of the Lesna Convent of the Mother of God in Provemont (France), passed away at the age of 89. She served as abbess of the convent from 1993 to 2019.
She became a schema nun in 2019 upon retiring, and before that we all knew her as Mother Macrina.
She was born on May 9, 1936, in the village of Dno in the Pskov region of Russia, and her secular name was Mavra Karpovna Kholmova. During World War II, her family left Russia and, after a series of hardships, ended up in Morocco, which at the time was a French colony.
The Kholmov family attended Orthodox services in the churches of Casablanca and Rabat (Morocco). In Morocco, Mavra became fluent in French and received an education. Together with her sisters, she sang in the church choir. At the age of 18, with the blessing of Archpriest Mitrophan Znosko-Borovsky (later Bishop Mitrophan), she decided to become a nun and enter the Lesna Convent, which was then located in the suburb of Fourque near Paris.
In 1957, Mavra completed her paperwork and arrived at the convent. She was tonsured into the rassaphore on the 75th anniversary of the convent, November 2, 1960, and on August 5, 1967, was tonsured into the mantia with the name Macrina. That same year, along with the rest of the convent’s sisters, she moved to Provemont (Normandy, France), where the convent is now located.
For more than thirty years, she remained in the convent without leaving. She served as the longtime choir director of the convent. She also fulfilled the obediences of sacristan, altar server, and liturgical order keeper. From 1993, Mother Macrina served as abbess of the Lesna Convent. In 2019, she retired and was tonsured into the Great Schema with the name Angelina, in memory of Saint Angelina of Serbia.
Schema Abbess Angelina knew and remembered many figures of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco, who often visited the convent, tonsured her into the rassaphore in 1960. She kept several of his liturgical books, notes on liturgical rubrics, and texts of troparia and stichera that Saint John had translated from the Greek Menaion for the sisters.
She was also spiritually very close to Metropolitan Philaret, who spent nearly every summer at the convent in Provemont. Saint Philaret greatly loved and valued Mother Macrina, often speaking of her as a model nun. She was also highly esteemed by Archbishop Anthony of Geneva, who tonsured her into the mantia in 1967 and appointed her as the 6th abbess of the convent shortly before his death.
When Mother Macrina came to say goodbye to him, Bishop Anthony said to her: “I chose you because you still remember Mother Theodora and what the convent was like under her, and because you always cared for others…”
