Innocent of Alaska

Innocent of Alaska (August 26, 1797 – March 31, 1879), later called Innocent Metropolitan of Moscow, began as a Russian Orthodox missionary priest. He went on to become the first Orthodox bishop and then archbishop in the Americas, and eventually served as the Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna. His legacy rests on his missionary efforts, scholarly contributions, and administrative work in Alaska and the Russian Far East throughout the 1800s.

Early life and education

Born Ivan Evseyevich Popov in the village of Anginskoye, Irkutsk Governorate, Russia, his father Evsey Popov died when Ivan was six. He then lived with his uncle, a parish deacon, in Anga. At age ten in 1807, Ivan entered the Irkutsk Theological Seminary, where the rector gave him the surname Veniaminov to honor the recently deceased Bishop Veniamin of Irkutsk.

In 1817, he married Catherine, a local priest’s daughter, and on May 18 of that year was ordained a deacon at Irkutsk’s Church of the Annunciation. After finishing his studies in 1818, he became a teacher at a parish school. On May 18, 1821, he was ordained a priest for the same church, known in Russian as Father Ioann.

Ministry in Alaska

In early 1823, Bishop Michael of Irkutsk received orders to send a priest to Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands. Father Ioann Veniaminov volunteered. On May 7, 1823, he left Irkutsk with his aging mother, his brother Stefan, his wife, and their infant son Innocent. After a difficult yearlong journey by land and water, they reached Unalaska on July 29, 1824.

They built and moved into an earthen hut, and Father Ioann began studying local languages and dialects. He taught some parishioners Russian building techniques, and together they constructed Holy Ascension Church, finished the following July. His parish covered Unalaska and the nearby Fox and Pribilof islands, where indigenous people had already been converted to Christianity but still kept many older beliefs and customs. He often traveled between islands by canoe, facing stormy seas in the Gulf of Alaska.

Through these travels, Father Ioann grew familiar with local dialects, mastering six of them. He created an alphabet using Cyrillic letters for the most common dialect, Unangan Aleut. In 1828, he translated parts of the Bible and other church materials into that dialect. In 1829, he journeyed to the Bering Sea coast of mainland Alaska to preach.

In 1834, he was transferred to Sitka Island, to the town of Novoarkhangelsk (later Sitka). There he studied the Tlingit people, their language, and customs, producing the scholarly work Notes on the Kolushchan and Kodiak Tongues and Other Dialects of the Russo-American Territories, with a Russian-Kolushchan Glossary. In 1836, he traveled south on a pastoral tour to Fort Ross in Northern California, conducting a census and performing marriages and baptisms for Russians and local natives.

Kamchatka ministry

In 1838, Father Ioann went to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Kiev to report on his work and request expanded church activities in Russian America. While there, he learned his wife had died during a visit to Irkutsk. He asked to return home, but church officials urged him to become a monk. He initially refused, but on November 29, 1840, he was tonsured a monk with the name Innocent, after Saint Innocent of Irkutsk.

He was then elevated to Archimandrite. On December 15, 1840, he was consecrated Bishop of Kamchatka, the Kuril Islands, and the Aleutian Islands, with his see in Novoarkhangelsk (Sitka), where he returned in September 1841. For nine years he administered his diocese and made long missionary journeys to remote areas. On April 21, 1850, he was elevated to archbishop.

In 1852, the Yakut area joined the Kamchatka Diocese, and in September 1853 he moved permanently to Yakutsk. He traveled frequently through his enlarged diocese and focused on translating scripture and service books into the Yakut (Sakha) language. In April 1865, he was appointed to the Holy Governing Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. On November 19, 1867, he became Metropolitan of Moscow, succeeding his friend and mentor Filaret.