Saint Innocent of Alaska

1797–1879 · 19th c. · 7 works

St Innocent of Alaska (1797–1879), born Ivan Evseyevich Popov-Veniaminov, was a Russian Orthodox priest, missionary, and linguist, venerated as the Enlightener of the Aleuts and Apostle to America. Born in the village of Anginskoye in the Irkutsk province of Siberia, he trained at the Irkutsk seminary, where he took the surname Veniaminov, and was ordained a priest before volunteering in 1823 for the mission to Russian America.

From 1824 he served on the remote island of Unalaska in the Aleutians, and from 1834 at Sitka among the Tlingit. A gifted linguist and craftsman, he created an alphabet for the Unangan (Aleut) language and translated the Gospel of Matthew, a catechism, and his own catechetical masterpiece, Indication of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven (1833), into Aleut — among the first Christian books in any Alaska Native language. He also compiled pioneering ethnographic and linguistic studies of the peoples and islands of the region.

After the death of his wife, he was tonsured a monk and in 1840 consecrated Bishop of Kamchatka, the Kuriles, and the Aleutians — the first Orthodox bishop in the New World. He was raised to archbishop in 1850, and his vast diocese eventually stretched from Alaska across eastern Siberia. He laboured tirelessly for the indigenous peoples, insisting that the Gospel be preached and worshipped in their own tongues.

In 1868 he was elected Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna, the senior hierarch of the Russian Church, in which office he founded the Orthodox Missionary Society. He reposed in Moscow on 31 March 1879 and was glorified as a saint in 1977. His writings, all in the public domain, range from native-language translations and grammars to spiritual counsel, of which Indication of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven is the most beloved.

Sources: Orthodox Church in America — St Innocent, Metropolitan of Moscow and Enlightener of the Aleuts · Указание пути в Царствие Небесное — Азбука веры