Both the Roman Catholic Church and the reformed Protestant church have no claim to the great Irish Saint Patrick as the apostle of Ireland and to the Irish, as he predates those churches by hundreds of years. This great holy man of God was sent by God the Holy Trinity in the middle of the 5th century AD to bring Christianity to our pagan ancestors and plant and establish the early Celtic church.
There are other voices that claim that Saint Patrick was sent to Ireland by the pope of that time, but there is no evidence to back up this claim.
Rome at this time was being ransacked by Germanic Slavic pagan tribes, one of those was Attila the Hun, so those who suggest that the pope sent Saint Patrick at the time are unable to back it up as the pope had other problems.
Saint Patrick came to Ireland and preached the Gospel here for 30 years. When he died, not all the people had been converted to the Christian faith, and Saint Patrick planted the early Celtic church from which many other saints would go forth and bring Christianity to Europe and beyond.
The Celtic church was attacked over time by Viking invaders, who plundered monasteries and murdered the Celtic monks, yet that same church lasted until the 12th century, when the Norman invaders came.
This was the death-knell for the Celtic church. Not alone did the Normans bring their armies, they also came with priests of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Roman Catholic Church was to be given 10pc of the booty that Norman soldiers captured from the Irish.
Those were the terms the pope gave Henry II of England with his blessings to conquer Ireland
The pope and his church have never apologised to the Irish. As the English introduced us to a second religion -- Protestantism -- the Roman Catholic Church tried to give the impression that they were the native church and the forbears of Saint Patrick which they are not, but have tried to conceal the truth.
Both they and the Protestants are colonial churches that came here at different times and that native Celtic church was the real McCoy, founded by the Blessed Holy Saint Patrick, who is buried at Downpatrick, Co Down.
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