Saint Herman of Alaska
Monk of Valaam, wonderworker of All America
- Feast day
- December 13
- Lived
- c. 1751–1837
- Patronage
- North America, indigenous peoples, orphans
The first saint glorified in North America, Saint Herman came to Kodiak with the Valaam mission in 1794 and spent forty years defending the Aleut people against the Russian-American Company.
Life
A simple monk who was never ordained, Herman arrived in Alaska with eight other monastics. Within a few years most of the mission was dead or gone; he remained, settling on Spruce Island, which he called New Valaam, in a cell he dug himself.
He ran a school and an orphanage for Aleut children, cared for the sick during a devastating epidemic when everyone else fled, and repeatedly took the side of the natives against the brutality of the fur company, writing to the authorities in Russia on their behalf.
Miracles and glorification
He stopped a tidal wave by placing an icon of the Theotokos on the beach and telling the frightened villagers the water would come no further than that line, and turned back a forest fire by digging a trench. Asked by naval officers what he loved most, he answered: 'From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all.'
He was glorified in 1970, the first canonisation of a saint of the Orthodox Church in America.