SPRUCE ISLAND, Alaska – Pilgrims from across the world traveled here Wednesday to celebrate the 42nd anniversary of the canonization of St. Herman of Alaska.



St. Herman was part of the Russian mission that came to Kodiak in 1794. He helped convert the Native population to Christianity, but eventually came into conflict with the Russians about their treatment of the Native people. As a sort of exile, he moved to Spruce Island, where he lived a monastic life in the early 1800s.

“St. Herman, who lived here on Spruce Island, is a saint who is known throughout the Orthodox world,” Archbishop Benjamin Peterson of San Francisco and the West, and acting Diocese of Alaska, told the Kodiak Daily Mirror. “I think a lot of people feel connected to him because he’s closer to our time. He’s not really a remote figure.”




Pilgrims also visited the St. Herman’s spring to drink fresh holy water, and the homes and grave sites of the Rev. Peter Kreta and Rev. Archimandrite Gerasim Schmaltz, the men who came after St. Herman and carried on his legacy.



Pilgrims were from Russia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Mexico, Pennsylvania, Missouri, California, Alaska, and elsewhere in the United States.

Metropolitan Christopher, Archbishop of Prague and the head of the Orthodox Christian Church in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, was supposed to be in attendance, but had to return home due to a death in the church.
