Saint Patrick

Patrick was born in Roman Britain in the late 4th century, the son of a deacon named Calpurnius. At sixteen he was captured by Irish raiders and spent six years as a slave tending animals, where he learned to pray day and night. After escaping and returning home, he dreamed that the people of Ireland were calling him back. He prepared for the priesthood and returned to Ireland as a bishop, probably in the 5th century.

For some thirty years he preached, baptized thousands, ordained clergy and founded churches and communities, facing danger and opposition from local kings. His own writings, the Confession and the Letter to Coroticus, reveal a humble man full of gratitude to God. Legend says he used the shamrock to explain the Holy Trinity. He died on March 17, around 461, and tradition places his grave at Downpatrick, in what is now Northern Ireland.

Saint Patrick's Day is a holy day of obligation in Ireland and a festival worldwide, with parades in Dublin, New York, Chicago and Boston, shamrocks, green clothes and Irish music. Because it falls in Lent, many US dioceses dispense from meat abstinence when it lands on a Friday. In Mexico the day also honors the San Patricio Battalion, Irish soldiers who fought for Mexico in 1846–1848.