Hierarch Innocent (Veniaminov), Metropolitan of Moscow

Saint Innocent was born on August 26, 1797, in the village of Anginskoye, Irkutsk province, to the family of a village sacristan. He studied at the Irkutsk seminary and was ordained deacon (1817) and priest (1821) in Irkutsk.

In 1823 he volunteered as a missionary to Unalaska Island (the Aleutians), arriving in 1824. He built churches, schools, and hospitals; created a Cyrillic-based Aleut alphabet and translated the Gospel of Matthew and catechetical and liturgical texts into Aleut and later Tlingit. He authored the three-volume ethnographic study "Notes on the Islands of the Unalaska District," which won the Demidov Prize in 1841.

After his wife's death on November 29, 1840, he was tonsured a monk by Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov) of Moscow, taking the name Innocent in honor of St. Innocent of Irkutsk; elevated to archimandrite on November 30; and consecrated Bishop of Kamchatka, the Kurils, and the Aleutians on December 15, 1840. In 1850 he was elevated to archbishop and undertook extensive missionary journeys across Siberia and the Far East.

In 1858 he accompanied Count N. N. Muravyov-Amursky to the negotiations over the Treaty of Aigun; on May 9/21, 1858, he laid the foundation of a church at Ust-Zeyskaya stanitsa, from which the city of Blagoveshchensk ("Annunciation") later grew; the treaty itself, which secured the left bank of the Amur for Russia, was signed on May 16/28, 1858.

In 1868 he was elevated to Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna, succeeding Metropolitan Filaret (Drozdov). In 1870 he founded the Orthodox Missionary Society. He reposed on March 31, 1879 (Holy Saturday) in Moscow.

The canonization process was initiated in 1974 at the request of the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church in America; after three years of studying testimonies, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church glorified him on September 23/October 6, 1977 — a glorification notable for occurring during the Soviet period, when canonizations were extremely rare.

IMPORTANT CORRECTION: the original stub erroneously assigned him the category "righteous," although the bio text itself already called him "святитель" (hierarch) — an internal contradiction now resolved (category righteous→hierarch). One of the three original commemoration dates was also corrected: "October 10" is not attested in any source found — likely a distortion of the September 23/October 6 glorification date; the more likely alternative is the October 11, 1994 uncovering of relics at the Holy Spirit Church of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. The date has been corrected to the confirmed glorification date of October 6.