St. Patrick

Their story

Patrick was born in Roman Britain around the end of the fourth century. His father was a deacon and his grandfather a priest, but as a boy Patrick took little interest in the faith. When he was sixteen, raiders from Ireland attacked his home, captured him and sold him into slavery. For six years he tended sheep on the hills, hungry, cold and alone. In his loneliness he began to pray, sometimes a hundred times a day and a hundred times at night. One night Patrick heard a voice in a dream telling him that a ship was ready to take him home. He escaped, walked many miles to the coast and found the ship. After he returned to his family he studied for the priesthood. Then he had another dream, in which he heard the people of Ireland calling him to come back and walk among them once more. Around the year 432, as a bishop, he returned to the land where he had been a slave. For about thirty years Patrick traveled across Ireland preaching the Gospel, baptizing thousands, ordaining priests and founding churches and monasteries. He faced danger and opposition, and he was sometimes imprisoned, but he never stopped. Later legends say he used the shamrock to teach about the Trinity and drove the snakes from Ireland. In his own short book, the Confession, he simply thanks God for His mercy and calls himself a sinner. He died around 461. His faith, born in slavery, transformed a nation, and Irish missionaries later carried the Gospel across Europe and the world.