More than one and a half million Maya people in Guatemala now identify as Orthodox Christians, according to new research by scholars from the Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH). The findings, published in the Russian Academy of Sciences journal Latin America and reported by RIA Novosti, are the result of many years of fieldwork.

Galina Ershova, director of the Knorozov Mesoamerican Center at RSUH, says Orthodoxy has been spreading rapidly among the country’s Indigenous, Maya-speaking population in recent decades. “By 2025, over one and a half million people—more than six percent of Guatemala’s population—can be considered Orthodox. And this number is growing,” she noted. Today, the Orthodox presence is significantly larger than a decade ago, when Abbess Inés Ayau García estimated roughly one million believers.

Researchers link the growing interest in Orthodoxy to the historical traumas experienced by Indigenous communities. In the late 19th century, the liberal reforms of President Justo Rufino Barrios effectively banned Catholicism, closed monasteries, and confiscated church lands. This deprived Maya communities of their traditional religious environment and created a long-term search for new forms of spiritual life.

A pivotal figure in the emergence of Orthodoxy in Guatemala is Abbess Inés Ayau García. Born into an atheist family, she became a Catholic nun in her youth but later embraced Orthodoxy in the 1980s, inspired by the writings of the saints. At her initiative, the first Orthodox liturgy in Guatemala was celebrated in 1994. Two years later, the government transferred a semi-ruined shelter to the community, where she and several nuns established the Monastery of the Life-Giving Trinity and an orphanage.

In 1997, the country’s first Orthodox parish church—the Church of the Transfiguration—was consecrated on the grounds of the orphanage. Additional churches followed, including the Holy Trinity Church built in 2007 in the style of ancient Russian architecture. Over the years, more than a thousand children in the orphanage have embraced Orthodoxy.

One of Abbess Inés’s most significant initiatives was the founding of the Olga and Manuel Ayau Cordón University in 2013. The institution provides free online education with contributions from international scholars, including RSUH staff. Among its programs are courses in pre-Columbian history. Professor Galina Ershova, a student of the renowned linguist Yuri Knorozov, authored the first Spanish-language textbook on Maya writing, helping establish a new field of humanities education in Guatemala.

Orthodox communities continue to expand as entire Indigenous settlements join the Church, seeking what they view as a more traditional form of Christianity that resonates with their cultural heritage and strong communal identity. According to researchers, many Maya perceive Orthodoxy not as a foreign faith but as a restoration of spiritual wholeness lost during the upheavals of the 19th century, when Catholic institutions were dismantled.

Abbess Inés has been widely recognized for her humanitarian and educational work. Her honors include the Order of Friendship (2010), the Russian Ministry of Education and Science medal “For Mercy and Charity” (2010), and honorary doctorates from St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in the United States (2013) and RSUH (2015).