Innocent (Gula)

Bishop Innocent (Gula) of Anchorage was an auxiliary bishop in Alaska in the Orthodox Church in America. He is venerated by the faithful without synodal canonization.

He was born in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Saint Tikhon Seminary in South Canaan in 1977. He was ordained deacon and priest in the Carpatho-⁠Russian Diocese and in 1980 founded Saint Gregory of Nyssa Church in Seaford, New York. In 1983 he was administrator of the Annunciation Monastic Community in Tuxedo Park; received into the Orthodox Church in America, he served parishes in New York and New Jersey, and from 1990 was chaplain of the Community of the Holy Myrrhbearers at Otego. In 1994 he was appointed dean of students at Saint Herman Seminary in Kodiak, and the next year he was elected auxiliary bishop of Alaska, with the title of Anchorage, consecrated in September 1995 at Saint Innocent Cathedral. He travelled the diocese, taught at the seminary and visited distant parishes, especially in Yupik territory.

According to an American Orthodox account, after discovering irregularities in the diocese's land accounts and trying to report them, he was suspended by the Synod; in March 2001 he was retired. He died under unclear circumstances at his residence in Alaska on Bright Monday, 6 May 2002, his name day. He was buried at Hazleton. Since then, the same account says, he has appeared to families of Alaskan clergy in times of danger.