Despite July’s heatwave across much of Europe, Columban Missionary Fr Pat Colgan took part in two important events celebrating the life of St Columbanus in Italy and France.
The first (July 3-5th) took place in Lodi and the surrounding towns of San Colombano and Sant’Angelo Lodigiano.
It was the annual ‘Columbanus Day’ which brings together communities across Ireland and the Continent to commemorate culturally and liturgically the great legacy of the saint.
In recent years, it is customary for visitors and locals to together walk a section of the 5000+km ‘Columban Way’ which this year began at Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, which by coincidence had been visited just two weeks before by Pope Leo. He wanted to honour the birth town of the first canonised US saint – the Italian nun, Mother Frances Cabrini, indefatigable teacher and catechist to generations of impoverished Italian immigrants.
Fr Pat Collins with Irish Ambassador to the Holy See, Frances Collins.
In his homily at the Cathedral of Lodi, Bishop Mauricio Malvestiti attributed Sr Cabrini’s missionary spirit to that seed planted centuries before by the Irish monks.
St Columban’s Day in Lodi.
The second event (July 19th) was the ‘Pardon of St Columban’ enacted annually on the beach of ‘Anse de Gueslin’ near the suitably named Breton town of Saint-Coulombe.
Bishop Guillaume de Lisle, Auxiliary Bishop of Meaux, a diocese which includes Paris Disneyland and which is preparing to open a new church of St Columban next year to cater for the rapidly increasing population of workers associated with the Theme Park, celebrated Mass on the beach where it is believed Columban first landed in Europe in 590AD.
The Pardon of St Columban ceremony took place on the beach of ‘Anse de Gueslin’ near the Breton town of Saint-Coulombe. Photo: Fr Pat Colgan
He also blessed the boats and motorcycles whose owners look to St Columban for protection.
The Diocese of Down and Connor, where Bangor is located, the port from which St Columban’s boat left Ireland, set to host next year’s ‘Columbanus Day’, it seemed appropriate that I, as a Columban missionary, would be there and issue – in halting French! – a personal invitation to the Breton, French and other pilgrims to “come to where it all started!”
St Columban, it seems, continues his work of gathering, unifying and sending out disciples along the roads, seas and even airports of Europe and the world!
