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Since the late 20th century, believers have attributed healing from illnesses or conversion to the Orthodox Church to their prayers to Maria and Alexei, as well as to the rest of the family.<ref>{{cite web | author=Serfes, Demetrios | year= 2000| title= ''Miracle of the Child Martyr Grand Duchess Maria''| work= The Royal Martyrs of Russia| url= http://www.serfes.org/royal/miracleofmaria.htm | access-date= February 25, 2007| url-status = dead| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20060213165440/https://www.serfes.org/royal/miracleofmaria.htm | archive-date= February 13, 2006}}</ref><ref>{{cite web| author= Serfes, Demetrios| year= 2000| title= A Miracle Through the Prayers of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarevich Alexis| work= The Royal Martyrs of Russia| url= http://www.serfes.org/royal/miracleprayers.htm| access-date= February 25, 2007|url-status = dead| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070206173420/http://www.serfes.org/royal/miracleprayers.htm| archive-date= February 6, 2007}}</ref>
==Discovery of bodies==
The bodies of Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, and three of their daughters were discovered in 1979. Remains of two of the children, believed to be Maria and Alexei, were missing from the unmarked grave. The discovery of the Romanov remains was not acknowledged by the government until 1989 during the ''[[glasnost]]'' period. Following confirmation of identities through forensic and DNA analysis, the Imperial Family was interred in a state funeral at [[Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, Saint Petersburg|St. Peter and Paul Cathedral]] in St. Petersburg on 17 July 1998, eighty years after they were murdered.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://www.amazon.com/Yeltsin-Life-Timothy-J-Colton-ebook/dp/B00CW0PSUI/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8|title=Yeltsin: A Life|date=8 April 2008|publisher=Basic Books }}</ref>
It was not until 2007 that the remains of Alexei and one of his sisters were found at a second unmarked gravesite, about 70 meters from the first.<ref>{{cite web |author=Shevchenko, Maxim |year=2000 |title=The Glorification of the Royal Family |work=Nezavisemaya Gazeta |url=http://www.struggler.org/GlorificationOfTheRoyalFamily.html |access-date=December 10, 2006 |url-status = dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050824094901/http://www.struggler.org/GlorificationOfTheRoyalFamily.html |archive-date=August 24, 2005 }}</ref> On 23 August 2007, a Russian archaeologist announced the discovery of two burned, partial skeletons at a bonfire site at [[Ganina Yama]] near Yekaterinburg that appeared to match the site described in assassin [[Yakov Yurovsky]]'s memoirs. The archaeologists said the bones are from a boy who was roughly between the ages of ten and thirteen years at the time of his death and of a young woman who was roughly between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three years old. Anastasia was seventeen years, one month old at the time of the assassination, while her sister Maria was nineteen years, one month old; and her brother Alexei was two weeks shy of his fourteenth birthday. Anastasia's elder sisters Olga and Tatiana were twenty-two and twenty-one years old at the time of the assassination. Along with the remains of the two bodies, archaeologists found "shards of a container of [[sulfuric acid]], nails, metal strips from a wooden box, and bullets of various caliber."<ref>[http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/resurrecting-the-czar-64545030/?page=1 Hammer, Joshua. "Resurrecting the Czar", ''Smithsonian Magazine'', November 2010]</ref>
Preliminary testing indicated a "high degree of probability" that the remains belong to the Tsarevich Alexei and to one of his sisters, Russian forensic scientists announced on 22 January 2008.<ref name="Study">{{cite web | author=Interfax| year=2008| title = Suspected remains of tsar's children still being studied | work= Interfax | url=http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=4189| access-date= January 23, 2008}}</ref> The Yekaterinburg region's chief forensic expert Nikolai Nevolin indicated the results would be compared against those obtained by foreign experts.{{cn|date=April 2023}} On April 30, 2008, Russian forensic scientists announced that DNA testing proves that the remains belong to the Tsarevich Alexei and to one of his sisters.<ref name="Eckel">{{cite web|author=Eckel, Mike |year=2008 |title=DNA confirms IDs of czar's children |work=yahoo.com |url=https://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080430/ap_on_re_eu/russia_czar_s_family |access-date=April 30, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080501043005/http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080430/ap_on_re_eu/russia_czar_s_family |archive-date=May 1, 2008 |url-status = dead}}</ref>
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Image:Yekaterinburg cathedral on the blood 2007.jpg|[[Yekaterinburg]]'s "[[Church of All Saints, Yekaterinburg|Church on the Blood]]," built on the spot where Nicholas II and his family were murdered in 1918
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