The Celtic Times

Confessio Patricus, the written confessions of St Patrick, have a special resonance today, in this the age of damning reports from Raphoe to Cloyne on an infected church in an era of overwhelmingly disinterested, disconnected younger generations and demoralized older ones.

Patrick apparently was an unbecoming upstart figure to his clerical peers in the mid fifth century, and the Confessio was all about setting the record straight from his own perspective. A fifth century tribunal response, if you like, where the once enslaved Briton shepherd boy of part Roman stock (some sources indicate Kilpatrick, near Glasgow was his birthplace) sets down in his own hand the circumstances that led to his mission to Ireland and how he went about answering the call.

Indeed Dáibhí Ó Croinín a superb lecturer who could entice 9am attendances on hazy Friday mornings in Galway, quipped that Patrick, must have been the only citizen of the Roman empire to have been made a slave and live to tell the tale. It is also a strongly held viewpoint by Ó Croinín and prominent scholars of this period that Patrick the man, arrived into an Ireland that already had embryonic Christian communities and that aspects of these early missions are later combined within the persona of Patrick.
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