Innocent was born Ivan Evseyevich Popov (Иван Евсеевич Попов) on August 26, 1797, into the family of a church server in the village of Anginskoye, Verkholensk District, Irkutsk Governorate, in Russia.

Father Ioann Veniaminov volunteered to go and on May 7, 1823, he departed from Irkutsk, accompanied by his aging mother, his brother Stefan, his wife, and their son, Innocent, an infant.

[11] After Father Ioann and his family built and moved into an earthen hut, he set about studying the local languages and dialects.

Father Ioann often traveled between the islands in a canoe, battling the stormy ocean in the Gulf of Alaska.

From his studies there, he wrote the scholarly works Notes on the Kolushchan and Kodiak Tongues Archived 2010-04-15 at the Wayback Machine and Other Dialects of the Russo-American Territories, with a Russian-Kolushchan Glossary.

In 1836, Father Veniaminov made the journey south on a pastoral tour of the southernmost extent of Russian America, landing at Fort Ross in Northern California.

While there he conducted a census and performed the sacraments of marriage and baptism for the Russian population and local natives.

He spent the next nine years administering his diocese as well as taking several long missionary journeys to its remote areas.

In April 1865 Archbishop Innocent was appointed a member of the Holy Governing Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church.

As metropolitan, he undertook revisions of many church texts that contained errors, raised funds to improve the living conditions of impoverished priests, and established a retirement home for clergy.

Innocent's feast day is celebrated by the Orthodox Church three times a year: March 31, the date of his repose according to the Julian Calendar (April 13 N.S.

[16] On the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA), Innocent is honored with a feast day on March 30.