Innocent of Irkutsk

Ivan Kulchitsky, born around 1682 into a noble Ukrainian family, a monk and then a professor at the Moscow academy, was named by Peter the Great to lead the Orthodox mission to Peking. Consecrated bishop in 1721, he set out and waited at Selenginsk, near the border, where the Chinese authorities refused him entry: St Petersburg had announced him as a “great spiritual lord”, a phrase Peking read as a political claim. Three years of waiting, without salary or instructions. In 1727 the Holy Synod named him bishop of Irkutsk rather than recall him. There he organised a vast and poor diocese, founded schools where Mongolian and Chinese were taught, and died in 1731, worn out. Canonised by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1804, he is the first canonised Siberian saint.