Pilgrimage is one of those privileged times when you step away from the demands of work and daily living. Throwing your lot in with a wider group, collectively you undertake a faith journey where the camaraderie eases the challenges and affords many opportunities to exchange ideas and learn from each other and encounter God.
The overarching reason a group of Columban priests, Sisters and lay people set out from Dublin in the footsteps of the great Irish medieval missionary, St. Columban was the centenary of the Missionary Sisters of St. Columban. Sisters from the Philippines, Hong Kong, Ireland, Scotland and Korea were at the heart of the group and the pilgrimage took us to France, Switzerland, Austria and Italy, as we visited places where St. Columban made foundations.
Prior to the pilgrimage, St. Columban was really just. a name to me, the patron of the Columban missionaries. However, thanks to this immersive experience and the expertise of some of those on the pilgrimage, by the end of the two weeks I felt inspired, enthused and rather in awe of this great man. He no longer seemed to be lost. in the mists of time. Seeing the actual places where he lived and died brought him alive. Furthermore, there was a sense that at a time of political fragmentation, with war in Ukraine and the Middle East, his message of peace has as much relevance in the 21st. century as it had 1,400 years ago.
Arriving in Basel Airport in Switzerland, we were greeted by two members of the Friends of St. Columban from France who kindly drove us over the border into eastern France to our first. destination, the French market town of Luxeuil les Bains. Here the pilgrim group was based at the former seminary of St. Columban’s Abbey, as it prepared to close its doors as a school and change ownership.
One of the standout moments of the pilgrimage took place in St. Columban’s Abbey on European Day as a plaque was unveiled to Venerable Robert Schuman, the Luxembourg-born politician who was twice prime minister of France and is known as ‘the father of Europe’. A devout catholic, a special lecture given at St. Columban’s Abbey on Schuman revealed that he had strongly considered becoming a priest. and remained something of an ascetic throughout his life.
The conference and plaque also recalled a gathering in Luxeuil les Bains in 1950 to mark the 1,400th anniversary of the birth of St. Columbanus. At that gathering Schuman outlined to scholars, as well as political and religious leaders, (including the future John XXIII) his proposal for peaceful co-existence among European nations via a community – what would later develop into the European Union. His patron for the venture was St. Columban, who is credited with first. espousing the notion of a European identity. St. Columbanus was the first. to use the phrase “all of Europe” in a letter he wrote to Pope Gregory in around 600AD. Commemorating St. Columban, Robert Schuman gave a speech in which he spoke of the Irish monk as “the patron saint of all those who seek to construct a united Europe”. His aim in proposing the integration of French and German coal and steel production, uniting two of Europe’s historically hostile enemies in a new project of cooperation was to “make war unthinkable and materially impossible and to reinforce democracy”.
Columban Sisters were present at that ground-breaking meeting in 1950. Sr Ann Gray, the Assistant Editor of the Far East. magazine, who was on June’s pilgrimage, had brought a copy of co-foundress, Mother Mary Patrick’s recollections of the 1950 congress. Mother Mary Patrick and Mother Annunciata were among more than 20,000 participants who attended those celebrations around St. Columban in Luxeuil. The Far East. magazine in November 1950 noted, “The Congress was to be much more than a grateful tribute to a missionary saint for his work long ago. It was to focus attention on him as a guide and teacher for the world in its present need.”
Among the religious and political representatives who attended the unveiling of the plaque to Schuman in Luxeuil was the Apostolic Nuncio to the EU, Archbishop Noel Treanor, a great friend of St. Columban and the Columban missionaries. Little did we know that he would sadly pass away so soon afterwards (August. 2024). What a great loss to the Church and to the Columbans. The event was also attended by Archbishop Philippe Ballot of Metz, a former student of St. Columban’s college in Luxeuil les Bain and Archbishop Jean-Luc Bouilleret of Besançon.
St. Columbanus founded a monastery in Luxeuil after his arrival in the region in 590/591AD. It was built on the ruins of the Roman settlement, Luxovium. According to Archbishop Treanor, the trigger for St. Columban’s promotion of peace and a common bond among the peoples of Europe at the time was the horrendous experiences that followed the fall of the Roman Empire. Similarly, Robert Schuman’s desire to see unity and peaceful coexistence among Europeans followed the horrors of the two world wars in the 20th century and the Franco-Prussian war of the late 19th century.
Outside the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul in Luxeuil stands Claude Grange’s prize-winning statue of St. Columban, epitomising both his spiritual stature and combative nature. From our base in Luxeuil, we visited Annegray, the site of St. Columban’s first. monastery on the ruins of a disused Gallo-Roman fort at the end of the 6th century AD. In this heavily forested and scenic Vosges region of eastern France it is understandable that St. Columban would have felt close to nature. We also visited the cave in Sainte Marie en Chamois where Columban would retreat from the monastery for solitude and personal prayer. At the hermitage of San Valbert we explored the small chapel, the fountain and cave and saw a photo displayed commemorating the role of Columban seminarians under Fr Bill Hallidan in 1960 reconstruction of the site.
One of the high points for the Columban Sisters was Mass in the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, when Archbishop Treanor invited them to join him after Communion as he introduced them to the congregation. He saw their diverse ethnicity as an example of the kind of intercultural living which St. Columban espoused and he paid tribute to the Sisters’ work as they marked their centenary.
After incredibly generous hospitality (delicious food!) from the Friends of St. Columban in Luxeuil, it was time for the group to move on to the next stage of the pilgrimage. We were based in the city of San Gallen in eastern Switzerland, which grew out of the hermitage founded by St. Gall, who is patron saint of Switzerland. According to tradition, St. Gall was one of the twelve companions that left Bangor in Ireland with St. Columban on his missionary journey.
The first. abbey church was built over St. Gallus’ grave around 719AD. The present-day Cathedral of San Gallen was erected between 1755-1766 and is considered to be a notable example of Baroque architecture. We also got to see the city’s stunning UNESCO heritage library and an exhibition on the history of the monastery and the Irish manuscripts held by this famous abbey. Manuscripts played an important role in Irish monasticism during the Early Middle Ages. Centuries of destruction of Ireland’s cultural heritage reduced this once immense treasure to a few hundred manuscripts. With four manuscripts and eleven fragments, the Abbey Library of St. Gall holds the largest. collection of Irish manuscripts dating from the early period until 850AD. One of these is Priscian’s Latin Grammar which contains 9,412 explanations in Old Irish and therefore is one of the main sources for the Old Irish language. The scribe left some personal comments in the margins of some pages including comments such as: “I’m cold” or “The ink is thin”.
St. Gallen is about 20 kms from the shores of Lake Constance. We undertook two pilgrim walks along the Columban Way on the shores of the lake. One was to the Chapel of St. Gall in Arbon, where St. Gall died in 627AD and the other was St. Columban’s Church in Rorschach. The church pilgrims see today in Rorschach dates back 1885. Above the entrance portal there is a statue of St. Columban.
Another city on the Columban Way is Bregenz in Austria and we visited St. Columban’s Church there after a short boat trip across Lake Constance. This parish church is located close to the Gebhard Mountain. A newish structure, it was consecrated in 1966 and took the Irish monk as its patron. We were all struck by the sense of sacredness inside the church, which was designed by Egino Weinert and the beauty of the modern stained-glass windows which abstractly depicted the different kinds of martyrdom. Outside, a massive two-ton rock from Bangor has pride of place, a reminder that both Bregenz and Bangor are twinned with each other because of St. Columban.
From Bregenz, the Columban pilgrimage crossed the Alps by train, travelling down into northern Italy to the city of Piacenza where the group was joined by more Columban priests and lay friends as well as a number of Irish and Italian bishops ahead of the XXV International Meeting of the Columban Communities at the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta e Santa Giustina. Evening prayer and the reception of the relics of St. Columban took place in the cathedral on the evening of 22nd June with Bishops Denis Nulty, Michael Duignan, Paul Connell and John McAreavey joining Bishop Adriano Cevolotto of Piacenza-Bobbio and other Italian prelates.
Earlier in the day, the pilgrim group attended a conference at which historian Professor Damian Bracken of UCC spoke on ‘Traditions of St. Brigid in Italy and the Continent: mission and identity’ at the Church of St. Bridget of Ireland in Piacenza. As Bishop Denis Nulty noted, this “excellent talk” reminded us of “how Brigid and Columbanus have left a huge imprint on mainland Europe – Columbanus through his travels and the many monasteries he established; Brigid through the traditions associated with her devotion. Perhaps at home we fail to appreciate the deep impressions our Irish saints have made on mainland Europe”.
The following day a number of receptions were held in Piacenza by civil and religious authorities to honour the gathering of St. Columban associations. At Sunday Mass in the Cathedral a message from Pope Francis was read out by Bishop Cevolotto. “Pope Francis encouraged us not to leave St. Columbanus in the past, his values are not just. a legacy that has passed, but a living reality that can help Europe recover the best. of its heritage,” recalled Bishop Denis Nulty, who announced at the end of Mass that during the ‘Jubilee of Hope’ next year, International Columban Day would be celebrated in Carlow Cathedral on Sunday 13th July 2025, the first time the celebration is taking place in the Republic of Ireland. The 2015 celebration was hosted in Bangor and Armagh.
Then it was on to Bobbio, the final resting place of St. Columban, who died here on 23rd November 615AD. Visiting the crypt in St. Columban’s church in Bobbio and seeing the 15th century sarcophagus of St. Columban by the sculptor Giovanni dei Patriarchi remains a ‘stand out’ moment of the pilgrimage. The peace and tranquillity will stay with me for a long time to come. The monastery founded by St. Columban in Bobbio became one of the most. important monastic centres in Europe, famous in medieval times for its Scriptorium, one of the most. active in antiquity.
Launching an exhibition, ‘Ireland and the Birth of Europe’ on the legacy of St. Columbanus and the Irish church in antiquity in the Italian town of Bobbio, the Irish Ambassador to the Holy See, Frances Collins, said, “The monastery which Columbanus founded here in Bobbio was to become a great seat of learning in medieval Europe, possessing one of the largest. libraries which existed in the Middle Ages.” Ambassador Collins told the assembled civic and religious leaders, “Today we in Ireland look back upon the days of Columbanus and his contemporaries with much pride,” the Irish Ambassador said in a tribute to the early Irish Church missionary movement. She said the life of St. Columban underlines, “the extent to which we in Ireland have been intimately connected with the rest. of Europe throughout our history”.
Professor Damian Bracken of UCC’s Department of History, who researched and curated the exhibition, said it was intended to give historical depth to Ireland’s involvement in Europe. “Ireland didn’t join Europe in 1973 – it was part of the European mainstream for 1,000 years before that,” he said. “What this exhibition celebrates is that unity and freedom go together.”
Addressing the launch on behalf of the Irish bishops, Bishop Michael Duignan of Galway and Clonfert said attending the XXV International Columban Day’s gathering in Piacenza as well as the exhibition launch in Bobbio was “a very emotional” experience. “It is beautiful and profoundly moving to see the esteem, emotion and veneration that St. Columbanus is remembered with in these parts.” He continued, “Columbanus was a missionary. He left Ireland because he felt that was what God was calling him to do. He had a great sense of the transcendent and of the divine. He had a great sense that belief in the transcendent and the divine linked all people together. “I don’t think we can understand Europe without understanding its Christian roots and its Christian colour. I think this belief in the transcendent – this belief that we are all united as sons and daughters of God – is the key to St. Columbanus’ thinking and motivation.” He suggested that it might act as a stimulus for Irish people and Europeans into the future.
