Herman the Wonderworker

According to the legends, he once held back a flood by placing an icon on the beach and declaring that the waters would not go past it. Another time he thwarted a forest fire by similar means. He lived in a cave, wore a deerskin cassock and slept on a wooden bench with bricks for his pillow. As a missionary, he defended the Aleuts against the traders who exploited them. He ran a school and orphanage for the natives, among whom--even in his own lifetime--he was popularly regarded as a saint. Last week the Orthodox Church in America made it official. In richly traditional ceremonies on Kodiak Island in Alaska, "Herman the Wonderworker" was formally canonized.

Herman is the first American saint on the Orthodox calendar. He was also in the first group of Russian Orthodox clergy to come to Alaska in 1794, just two years after the Russian-American Company established a settlement on Kodiak. The canonization ceremonies, accordingly, were lavish: a three-hour liturgy climaxing four days of celebration. Nine Orthodox bishops, in jeweled crowns and brocaded robes, presided. Pilgrims from all over the U.S. jammed the tiny wooden church in Kodiak. At the end of the nighttime liturgy, St. Herman's wooden coffin was borne out of the church and around it followed by a long line of worshipers bearing candles.

Competitive Rite. The canonization was the first major act of the Orthodox Church in America since it won official recognition as the legitimate branch of Russian Orthodoxy in the U.S. and Canada. Last spring the 850,000-member church, formerly known as the Metropolia, gained Moscow's grudging approval of its self-governing status and its canonical legitimacy-(TIME, March 16; April 13). Now the canonization gives it international dignity; Finnish and Bulgarian Orthodox churches, for example, promptly accepted St. Herman. Others are expected to follow.

Not all, however. One bitter rivalry persists, and it produced a second, competitive canonization for St. Herman. The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, a splinter group of anti-Communist persuasion, maintains that the parent Russian Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union--and any churches loyal to it--lost their legitimacy by dealing with the atheistic Soviet government. The leaders of the Church Outside Russia accordingly do not recognize the actions of other Russian Orthodox groups. Thus on the same weekend as the Kodiak ceremonies. New York's Metropolitan Philaret led a glittering procession down Geary Boulevard in San Francisco to the minareted Cathedral of the Holy Virgin, there to confirm with another solemn liturgy that Herman is really a saint.

-A separate "patriarchal exarchate" directly loyal to Moscow has been dissolved. Although the exarchate's parishes in the U.S. have not yet joined the Orthodox Church in America, they are ostensibly at peace with it.

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