Patrick is one of the great missionaries of all times; the church he founded in Ireland itself became missionary and eager to share its faith throughout the whole world. Patrick was one of the first people to take a public stand against slavery.

How did he bring the Gospel to Ireland without the back-up of money or soldiers or a great culture? He used his intimate knowledge of the language and the Irish culture and his personal love for Christ. He was one of the first in ancient times to speak against slavery; this might be because he himself had been a slave in Ireland. His faith has been spread by the Irish people throughout the world and his feast day is celebrated everywhere with great panache and humor and affection. We share with you a few lines from his famous autobiography known as the Confession of St. Patrick written way back in the 5th century.

May it inspire you to read all of that work when you get on opportunity because it contains the clues to true missionary endeavor.

By Katie Donovan

Father Aedan McGrath runs the Incola missionary program in Manila. Here he talks to Katie Donovan about his life of adventure: among other things he protected 1,500 women from rape and slaughter by Japanese soldiers in 1939, and spent three years in solitary confinement in a Chinese jail.

China

“Mao gave us a big compliment, he said the Church was public enemy number one.” Father Aedan McGrath, originally a Dubliner from Drumcondra, recalls being put in prison because of his missionary work as a Columban Father in China: “I was arrested on the 7th of September 1951. I was put in a tiny cell, like a dog box. It was solidarity confinement for three years. There was no table, chair or bed. I could lie on the floor. It wasn’t like Mountjoy, nor one of these prisons that like first-class hotels. I was never allowed to close my eyes, talk or sneeze. All around me people were going mad. They did not have their faith.”

By: Sr. Marcelle Bual, SPC

Sr. Marcelle Therese Bual was born in Bukidnon, Mindanao where her father farmed. She went to school in Xavier College Cagayan de Oro where she took Accounting, Later she joined the St. Paul Sisters and was sent on mission to Nazareth in the Holy Land. From there she transferred to their mission in Ireland.
It is three years now since I came to Dublin, Ireland in 1991. many things have happened since then joys and sorrows, loneliness and friendships, bitter cols weather and pleasant sunny days, and other experiences, positive and negative in nature... as is always so in any normal life.

By: Sr. Marcelle Bual, SPC

Sister lived through the tensions of the INTIFADA- the uprising of the Palestinians in the Israeli occupied West Bank. She also witnessed the Gulf War and tells us how, hiding in a sealed room as the Iraqui scud missiles skimmed across the sky, her thoughts often strayed to a certain faraway place...

I am a Sister of St. Paul. My first foreign mission assignment was in Bethlehem University, first teaching the Palestinian students Business Administration and then, at the start of Intifada, working as the accountant of the university.