Matthew Hartley
Many women of outstanding holiness of life graced its soil, and their prayers help sustain it to this day.
According to the proclamation of Archbishop Makarios of Australia, the great 20th-century ascetic and wonderworker St. Paisios the Athonite is now the patron saint of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia.
Two monasteries of particular note, both from the area of Rouen, were especially important, and the saints who founded them rank among the greatest saints of which the West can boast.
To this day, their deeds of prayer and ascetic self-denial inspire reverent awe in all who read of them with piety.
From early on and up nearly to the very end of its Orthodox history, the region of northwestern France now known as Normandy was graced with a veritable pleiad of holy hierarchs.