This matchup sounds like a Southern football rivalry… but it’s actually a global showdown: Orléans vs. Georgia. 🇫🇷🇬🇪

That’s right… Joan of Arc vs. Nino of Georgia.

Will Nino send Joan packing on a midnight train? 🚂

Or will the People’s Champion charge ahead with sword and shield? ⚔️

Two nations’ favorite daughters. Two fearless defenders of the faith. One coveted spot in the Elate Eight.

And waiting there? None other than Peter, who just edged out Thomas by two percent in an apostolic nail-biter.

Who advances? That part is up to you. Vote now.

Nino of Georgia

There’s no shame in admitting you hadn’t heard of Nino before this year’s Lent Madness. I mean, I hadn’t, but now I’m basically an expert, and I’m fully convinced that this is one of the most overlooked and under-celebrated holy women in history.

Everything about Nino’s story is larger than life. She was born in Cappadocia but was raised by nuns in Jerusalem and it was there, in childhood, that she fell in love with Jesus and religious life. Because she was a superstar, she was chosen to go to Rome. There, she made such a name for herself as an evangelist that the anti-Christian emperor pursued her until she was forced to flee to Armenia with a crew of 35 virgins (or so, some accounts say 37!). She baptized all the virgins herself.

In Armenia, another king wanted to get rid of her. (Imagine having one king try to get rid of you, let alone 2?!) And so she fled again and finally reached the land with which she would always be associated, the Kingdom of Iberia which is the modern-day country of Georgia.

If you try to google Nino, you might be confused, since the word is often associated with the child Jesus. The “Santo Nino” is revered by Filipino Catholics, an image of the baby with arms outstretched. But Saint Nino of Georgia’s name is more ancient than a romance language’s association with the child. Some research suggests a link to the Sumerian word "Nin," which means "Lady" or "Mistress." This root is found in the names of ancient deities like Inanna (Nin-ana), hinting at a "great mother" or divine teacher connection.

And Nino is certainly great. Once she reached Georgia, buoyed by a visitation from Mary the Godbearer, she converted hundreds of people to Christianity, until she finally reached the Queen Nana and her husband King Mirian, a third king who wanted nothing to do with her! But with this one, Nino’s religious power prevailed. Seeing his wife healed through the waters of baptism and her new Christian faith, he came to Nino and asked to be baptized.

Nino had fulfilled the mission from God she received at Mary’s visitation: convert the people of Iberia. To this day, she is the “Enlightener of Georgia,” and the Orthodox Church has given her the title “Equal to the Apostles.” But did you know that there is an Episcopal Church in Tbilisi, Georgia? And a Georgian Episcopal Mission in Brooklyn, New York, both indirect legacies of Nino’s influence on the Christian landscape in Georgia.

The best part about Nino, though, is that once she had converted an entire country (to-do list, done!), she retreated to the mountains and spent the rest of her life chilling with other nuns, her OG crew. Now that’s retirement!

Just before the turn of the 4th century, a young girl was born to a Greek-speaking Roman family in Cappadocia. The baby, Nino, would go on to receive the title “Equal to the Apostles” from the Orthodox Church for her role as the “Enlightener of Georgia” -- the woman who converted an entire country.

Nino had prominent parents in Roman society and so was raised by a nun in Jerusalem, immersed in the rhythms of early Roman Christianity. Perhaps because she showed promise as a future religious herself, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who was also her uncle, helped her make her way to Rome. There she met and served the lady Hripsime, who had caught the eye of the Emperor Diocletian, a notoriously anti-Christian figure. To avoid his pursuit, with the help of Nino, Hripsime and her companions fled to Armenia. Along the way, Nino baptized the whole crew of women. These “35 virgins” went on to preach the word of God throughout Armenia.

They did not escape the notice of nobility in their new location, however, and soon King Tiridates III called for their beheading. Hripsime was martyred, but Nino made her way out and over to the Kingdom of Iberia, the modern-day country of Georgia.

There, she had her famous vision: Mary the Godbearer extending a cross of grapevines, with the instruction that Mary would be her shield in the work of converting the people there to the saving faith in Jesus. Nino received the grapevine cross and tied it with her own hair. Today, the “grapevine cross” is distinct for its drooping arms.

Nino traveled all over the Kingdom of Iberia converting people to Christianity. Eventually, she encountered Queen Nana, who had long suffered from debilitating illness. Nino healed her, and baptized her. Her husband, King Mirian, initially rejected his wife’s conversion, until his own miracle occurred. After being struck blind on an excursion, he prayed to the God of his wife and begged for healing. With his sight restored, he, too, was baptized, and became the first Christian King of Iberia, securing the role of Christianity in the kingdom. Nino, seeing that she had fulfilled the instructions from her vision, she retreated to the mountains, where she spent her remaining days living a monastic life.

Today, Nino is a Georgian national hero, whose faith laid the groundwork for the Georgian Orthodox Church. The name Nino is still to this day the most popular name for women in the country.

— Julia Offinger

Joan of Arc

Let's get the wondrously ridiculous part out of the way up front: Joan of Arc is the only person in recorded history to be condemned and canonized by the same institution. The Catholic Church burned her as a heretic in 1431 and declared her a saint in 1920. Now, the Church did eventually come around…it just took 489 years.

In the meantime, she has accumulated a patronage list that covers a surprising amount of ground: France, obviously, but also soldiers, prisoners, and, perhaps most fittingly, people ridiculed for their piety. If you have ever been the person who said grace at a restaurant and caught a sideways look, she is apparently your girl.

Something her accusers probably wished they hadn't pressed her on: Joan never actually killed anyone in battle. She went into combat carrying her banner rather than a weapon quite deliberately. She refused to take a life. She was shot with an arrow between the neck and shoulder and still returned to the field to lead the final assault, all with a banner as her beacon. When asked whether she preferred her banner or her sword, she had an answer ready:

"Better — forty times better — my banner than my sword!"

Then there is the matter of that sword. Before her first campaign, Joan sent men to a church in Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois with instructions to dig behind the altar. Her voices had described it to her: ancient, rusted, marked with five crosses. To everyone’s great surprise, it was exactly where she said it would be. When the rust was cleaned away, the five crosses appeared. For the skeptics in the room, evidence suggests she had never been to that church.

Her trial transcripts are one of the great documents of the medieval period — and one of the more remarkable examples of a teenager refusing to be outmaneuvered by grown men, much less a room full of hostile clerics. When pressed with a question designed to trap her, she replied:

"Children say that people are hanged sometimes for speaking the truth."

And when she left her village for the first time to seek the king, she said not "I am not afraid" which is the version that gets stitched onto throw pillows. She said something with considerably more edge to it:

"I do not fear the soldiers, for my road is made open to me. It was for this that I was born!"

She was nineteen when she died. She never learned to read or write. Everything we know of her in her own voice comes from the transcript of a trial designed to destroy her. That her voice comes through so clearly anyway is, in its own way, a kind of miracle.

— Samantha Smith