Columban Missionary Fr Pat Colgan has been promoting St Columban and the Columban Missionaries in schools named after our patron.
The recent participation of the ‘Coro Gerberto’ Male Choir from Bobbio (Italy), where St Columban died, in the 2025 Bangor International Choral Competition provided an opportunity for some ‘Friends of St Columbanus’ to visit two schools which bear the name of St Columban.
Just before the Bobbio choir were welcomed by the Deputy Lord Mayor and the Former High Sheriff to the Council Chambers at Belfast, City Hall, Fr Pat Colgan (Turas Columbanus, Ireland) along with Manuela Bertoncini and Diego Frasta (Peregrinus Project, Italy) gave a presentation to the St Columban Primary School at Old Park Avenue in Belfast, with the aim of developing links between this and a similar school in Italy.
Coro Geberto being welcomed by the Deputy Lord Mayor of Belfast.
A couple of days later, Fr Pat Colgan visited the other St Columban Primary School in the diocese of Down and Connor, which is located in Kilkeel, Co Down. This is the town where Fr Pat’s father grew up and his uncle taught in the school for four years in the 1970s.
The present site is a recent amalgamation of three schools.
Fr Pat was able to speak to most of the teachers at their tea break and then had time with the P7 (senior) class, who knew a little about St Columban but had never heard of the Columban Missionaries.
Columban Missionary Fr Pat Colgan with two pupils holding placards with the words of St Columbanus.
Their eco and sensory garden is very in tune with the Saint’s vision, and the children are proud of their location, overlooking the Irish Sea at the foot of the famous Mountains of Mourne.
Fr Pat presented the school with two ‘sign boards’ with sayings of Columbanus, along with gifts from Manuela Bertoncini of a hardback history of Bobbio with attractive photographs, and also a handmade, Ligurian-style palm, as a preparation for Palm Sunday’s Passion.
Coro Geberto at Belfast City Hall.
It is hoped that just like the school in Belfast a school can be found to twin with Kilkeel so that these children, sharing St Columban and a European heritage and identity, can make new friends through emails, class zooms, and perhaps even reciprocal visits.
Such linkages do seem appropriate given that it was St Columban who first used the word “Europe” as a unifying concept and is the “Patron of all who seek to construct a united Europe”.
Manuela Bertoncini, Diego Frasta and the Head Teacher of St Columban’s Belfast, Ms Joanne Smyth.