Saint Innocent, Archbishop of Irkutsk, passed away on this day in 1731. From the time of Emperor Peter the Great (r. 1682–1725) up to that of Empress Elisabeth (r. 1741–1762), episcopal vacancies in the Russian Church were filled with natives of the Ruthenian lands (under the Polish Empire). They received their formal education from Roman Catholic theological schools and could relate better to the Petrine reforms than Muscovite bishops. Archimandrite Innocent (Kulʹchitskii) was one of them. He did not go to Rome, but studied at the Kiev Academy founded by St. Peter Mohyla in 1631. Russia was a land of opportunity for educated monks from the territory of the modern-day Ukraine. In 1710, St. Innocent arrived in Moscow to teach at Slavonic-Greek-Latin Academy founded in 1685 by the brothers Sophronios and Ioannikios Likhudes, who arrived in Moscow from the Jerusalem Patriarchate (this school became a direct predecessor of the Moscow Theological Seminary and Academy). In 1721, the Most Holy Governing Synod was established by Peter the Great. The collegial body replaced the Russian patriarch. The Ecumenical Patriarchate recognized this reform. As a result of the conflict between Qing China and Muscovy in 1685–1686, the Amur River was left to China in exchange for Russian trading favors in Beijing. The whole Cossack population of the border fortress Albazin was extradited to Peking. The presence of Russian Orthodox Christians in the capital of the Celestial Empire afforded the Russian Church the opportunity to send a bishop there. In 1721, Archimandrite Innocent was consecrated Bishop of Pereiaslavl in Saint Petersburg. He was supposed to go to China and lead the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission there. However, for several reasons, the Chinese did not let him into the country. In his documents, Bishop Innocent was called “Great Lord” (a challenge to the Chinese Imperial order), the Chinese were not happy with the resolution of the border disputes with Russia, and the Jesuits being active in China since the end of the sixteenth century did not want competing Christian missionaries in Beijing. As a result Innocent, became Bishop of Irkutsk. In ten years, he passed away. In 1800, his relics were discovered to be incorrupt. St. Innocent became one of the few saints glorified during the Synodal period, in 1804. In Soviet times, his relics were confiscated and returned to Irkutsk only in 1990. Source: Archpriest Boris Pivovarov, O.A.Pavlova, Innokentii, Pravoslavnaia Entsiklopedia. | 
