Lydia Berdyaev

Her first marriage was with Baron Victor Ivanovich Rapp, an official of Kharkov Chamber of Control and coowner of the publishing house "V.I.

She was member of the Kharkov Union of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, for which she was arrested on 6 January 1900 and jailed for a month.

In 1918, when he was seriously ill with pneumonia, she was reading a book about Saint Teresa of Avila, which is how she developed an interest in Catholic mysticism.

Berdyaev introduced her to the priest Vladimir Abrikosov and on 7 June 1918 she was received into Catholicism of the Byzantine Rite.

In addition, she was an active parishioner of Fr Alexander Evreinov's Russian Catholic chapel of the Holy Trinity, located near the Porte d'Italie in Paris, where she took the lead in many charitable and pastoral projects.