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Stained-glass window of Saint Patrick from Saint Patrick Catholic Church, Junction City, Ohio, United States
(Credit : Nheyob, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons)

Saint Patrick was a fifth-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland. Known as the "Apostle of Ireland", he is the primary patron saint of Ireland, the other patron saints being Brigid of Kildare and Columba. He is also the patron saint of Nigeria.

Patrick was never formally canonised by the Catholic Church, having lived before the current laws were established for such matters. He is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church, the Church of Ireland (part of the Anglican Communion), and in the Eastern Orthodox Church, where he is regarded as equal-to-the-apostles and Enlightener of Ireland.

Saint's Life

The dates of Patrick's life cannot be fixed with certainty, but there is general agreement that he was active as a missionary in Ireland during the fifth century. A recent biography on Patrick shows a late fourth-century date for the saint is possible. According to tradition dating from the early Middle Ages, Patrick was the first bishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland, and is credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland (despite evidence of some earlier Christian presence on the island), and converting Ireland from paganism in the process.

In Patrick's autobiographical "Confessio", he writes that when he was about sixteen, he was captured by Irish pirates from his home in Britain and taken as a slave to Ireland. He writes that he lived there for six years as an animal herder before escaping and returning to his family. After becoming a cleric, he returned to spread Christianity in northern and western Ireland.

Bishop in Ireland

Finally, on an unknown date between 431 and 432, Patrick was consecrated Bishop of Ireland by Pope Celestine I and arrived in Slane on March 25, 432. The Bishop who had preceded him, Palladius, had returned to his country discouraged after less than two years of mission.

Patrick then found himself faced with countless difficulties: the chief of one of the Drude tribes tried to kill him, and for sixty days he was imprisoned, but despite the tribulations, Patrick persisted nearly forty years in his missionary work, converting thousands of Irish, introducing monastic life, and establishing the episcopal see in Armagh.

Veneration

According to tradition, St. Patrick used to explain the mystery of the Trinity by showing the clover, in which three leaflets are joined at a single stem. The first written testimony of this dates back to 1726, though the tradition could have much older roots. The images of St. Patrick often portray him with a cross in one hand and a clover in the other. That is why the clover is now a symbol of St. Patrick's Day, which falls on March 17, the day of his death in 461 at Saul.

By the seventh century, the saint had already come to be revered as the patron saint of Ireland.

Saint Patrick's Day is celebrated in Ireland and among the Irish diaspora as a religious and cultural holiday. In the Catholic Church in Ireland, it is both a solemnity and a holy day of obligation.

His remains were transported and buried in the cathedral of Down, which since then has been called Downpatrick.

Article by Catholic Time Staff