Saint of the Day, March 17

Saint Patrick (c. 387–461), the apostle of Ireland, was a Romanized Briton seized by raiders at sixteen and sold into slavery in pagan Ireland, where he tended sheep on Slemish for six years and learned the language and customs of the people who held him. After escaping home he became a priest and bishop and, sent by Pope Celestine, returned to Ireland in 432 to evangelize the very land of his bondage. His Confessio, written in old age, remains one of the most personal documents of the early Church. By the time of his death the country was organized into dioceses and on the way to becoming an island of saints and scholars whose monks would re-evangelize early medieval Europe.