ENCombining literary analysis with historical study, this interdisciplinary article examines how, in interwar Lithuania, the Catholic youth organization Ateitis made use of the vaidilutė – a fabled pagan priestess that tended sacred fires in pre-Christian Lithuania – as an image assisting a newly emerging class of young educated Catholic women to envision their role in nation- and state-building. Analyzing the use of the vaidilutė in both dramatic productions put on by the Ateitis organization and in the magazine Naujoji Vaidilutė, the article investigates how this medieval figure functioned as a locus for negotiating national, religious, and gender identity. [From the publication]