Ivan Smirennikov

Ivan Smirennikov was an Aleut elder of Akun Island in the Aleutian archipelago. He was baptized at the end of the eighteenth century by Hieromonk Makary, one of the missionaries sent from Russia to Alaska, and received the name John.

After his baptism, by his own testimony, for nearly thirty years two radiant men dressed in white appeared to him almost every day. They taught him the truths of the Christian faith, urged him to prayer and a pure life, and told him of things to come. Because he healed the sick and told fishermen where to find their catch, his neighbours took him for a kind of healer, though he himself would not accept the name.

In 1828, when the priest John Veniaminov, the future St Innocent of Moscow and Apostle to America, came to Akun, he found the islanders waiting for him on the shore in festive clothes. They told him that the elder Ivan Smirennikov had foretold his arrival and even described his appearance. Father John questioned the elder at length through the interpreter Ivan Pankov and came to the conviction that these could not be deceiving spirits, since such spirits would not have taught a man the true faith for thirty years. He wrote down his account of what he had learned and had it attested by the elder and the interpreter.

The story was preserved in the writings of St Innocent and later retold in Russian books of Christian instruction. The day and year of Ivan Smirennikov's repose are not known. The elder is venerated by the faithful and is painted in churches, among them the church of Bălan Monastery in Romania, but he has not yet been glorified by a synodal decision and has no day of commemoration in the calendars of the Churches. If you know more about his veneration, please write to us.