Saint Innocent on Unalaska: how he managed to convince the Aleuts to abandon polygamy and the murder of slavestranslated

If you count sea travel, this brave man covered a total of about 20,000 kilometers in his life! And this was in the 19th century, when even steamships were rare! Four trips around the diocese - from 8 to 18 months each. A round-the-world sea voyage around South America. Sermons on the Aleutian, Commander, Kuril Islands, Alaska, in Yakutia, the Amur region... Sleds and ships, boats and carts, rappelling from rocks, storms, shipwrecks, permafrost... He saved Indians from smallpox, compiled alphabets for the Aleuts, Koloshes, Yakuts... Theologian and ethnographer, naturalist and translator, A jack of all trades, he assembled watches, repaired barometers, knew a good dozen crafts, and spent 45 of his 82 years of life on the road. A boy from a remote Siberian village, by the end of his life he became the Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna, and at the end of the twentieth century he was canonized. Saint Innocent is called the Apostle of Siberia, the Far East and America.

“Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna Innocent”, engraving, Protasov P. P. / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

Here is just one episode from his amazing life.

In 1823, the Holy Synod ordered to send Father John (future...