32 St. Columban

St. Columban

The holy Abbot Columban was the best-known Irishman of the early Middle Ages. Since he worked as a monk, missionary, and writer in various countries of western Europe with good reason he can be called a “European” saint. With the Irish of his time, he had a sense of Europe’s cultural unity. The expression totius Europae- “of all Europe,” with reference to the Church’s presence on the continent, is found for the first time in one of his letters, written around the year 600, addressed to Pope Gregory the Great (cf. Epistula 1, 1)…

Taken from Great Christian Thinkers by Pope Benedict XVI