Concept

Innocent of Alaska

Summary
Saint Innocent of Alaska (Иннокентий; August 26, 1797 – ), also known as Saint Innocent Metropolitan of Moscow, was a Russian Orthodox missionary priest, then the first Orthodox bishop and archbishop in the Americas, and finally the Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna. Remembered for his missionary work, scholarship, and leadership in Alaska and the Russian Far East during the 19th century, he is known for his abilities as a scholar, linguist, and administrator, as well as his great zeal for his work. As a missionary priest he took his wife and family with him. In these territories he learned several languages and dialects of the indigenous peoples. He wrote many of the earliest scholarly works about the native peoples of Alaska, including dictionaries and grammars for their languages for which he devised writing systems; also, he wrote religious works in, and translated parts of the Bible into, several of these languages. His books were published beginning in 1840. Saint Innocent was born Ivan Evseyevich Popov (Иван Евсеевич Попов) on August 26, 1797, into the family of a church server in the village of Anginskoye, Verkholensk District, Irkutsk Governorate, in Russia. His father, Evsey Popov, died when Ivan was six, and Ivan lived with his uncle, the parish deacon, in Anga. In 1807 at age 10, Ivan entered the Irkutsk Theological Seminary, where the rector renamed him Veniaminov in honor of the recently deceased Bishop Veniamin of Irkutsk. In 1817, he married a local priest's daughter named Catherine. On May 18 that year, Ivan Veniaminov was ordained a deacon of the Church of the Annunciation in Irkutsk. After completing his studies in 1818, Veniaminov was appointed a teacher in a parish school. On May 18, 1821, he was ordained a priest to serve in the Church of the Annunciation in Irkutsk. In Russian he was known as Father Ioann, the religious version of Ivan. At the beginning of 1823, Bishop Michael of Irkutsk received instructions to send a priest to the island of Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska.
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