St Innocent of Alaska was a missionary priest, linguist, carpenter, scientist, bishop and finally Metropolitan of Moscow. His work among the Aleut and Tlingit peoples gave the Orthodox Church in Alaska its foundations, and he is remembered as Enlightener of the Aleuts and Apostle to America.

Missionary in Unalaska

He was born Ivan Popov on 26 August 1797 (Old Style) in a village near Irkutsk in Siberia, and later received the surname Veniaminov at seminary. As a married priest he volunteered for Alaska and arrived at Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands on 29 July 1824 with his family, after a journey of about a year.

On Unalaska he built a church with his own hands, travelled between the islands by kayak, and learned the Aleut language. He devised an alphabet for the Unangan language and translated the Gospel of Matthew and other texts. His short book in Aleut, Indication of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven, was later translated into Russian and widely read.

Sitka and the Tlingit

In 1834 he was transferred to Sitka, then called Novoarkhangelsk, the capital of Russian America. There he studied the Tlingit people and their language and won their trust, in part by caring for them during a smallpox epidemic.

Bishop and Metropolitan

After his wife's death he became a monk with the name Innocent, and on 15 December 1840 he was consecrated Bishop of Kamchatka, the Kuril and the Aleutian Islands, with his seat at Sitka. He oversaw the building of the Cathedral of St Michael the Archangel in Sitka and continued to travel across a vast diocese. In 1867 he was appointed Metropolitan of Moscow, the senior bishop of the Russian Church, where he founded a missionary society to support work in Siberia and Alaska. He died in Moscow in 1879.

Glorification

At the request of the Orthodox Church in America, the Russian Orthodox Church glorified him on 6 October 1977. His feasts are kept on 31 March, the day of his repose, and on 6 October.

In icons

St Innocent is usually depicted as a hierarch, either in the vestments of a bishop or wearing the white klobuk of a Metropolitan of Moscow, holding the Book of the Gospels. Some icons show him as a missionary, with a kayak, a church or the Alaskan landscape behind him. He often appears beside St Herman in icons of the saints of Alaska.