St. Augustine of Canterbury
Patron of England
Saint Augustine (d. 604), prior of Saint Andrew's monastery on the Caelian Hill in Rome, was sent in 596 by his friend Pope Gregory the Great at the head of forty Benedictine monks to bring the Gospel to the Angles. They were met in Kent by King Æthelberht, whose Frankish wife Bertha was already Christian, and given the ancient Roman church of Saint Martin at Canterbury for their use. Augustine baptized the king at Pentecost 597 and was consecrated first archbishop of Canterbury, founding the see that has been the mother church of English Christianity for fourteen centuries.