Bishop Innocent (in the world Alexis Pokhorovich Shishkin) was born in 1878 in the village of Shostka, Rodninsky uyezd, Sedletskaya province (Poland). In 1916 he graduated from St. Petersburg Theological Academy and went to serve as a priest in Novocherkassk. On February 30, 1923 he was arrested for not submitting to the local renovationist diocesan administration, and on March 30 was sentenced to three years in the camps. He was imprisoned on Solovki. On March 13, 1926 he was released and went to serve in the Kuban. From the beginning of 1928 he was in opposition to Metropolitan Sergius and joined the Josephites. From 1928 to 1929 he was an assistant to Bishop Alexis (Buj), carrying out the duties of dean of part of the Josephite parishes in the Kuban, where he helped Bishop Barlaam (Lazarenko). He lived in Yeisk, Krasnodar province. He was arrested in 1928, but was soon released. In November, 1929 he went to serve in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in Petrograd, but from the beginning of 1930 was in hiding, going from place to place and serving in secret. In 1930 he was consecrated Bishop of the Don (according to another source, of Yeisk) by the Catacomb Bishops Alexis (Buj), Barlaam (Lazarenko) and Joasaph (Popov). He lived in Novocherkassk, but never slept more than two nights in one place, being constantly pursued. In 1936 he went to his mother's grave in Rostov-on-Don, and was arrested there on October 7. He was...
