Why St. Patrick Was Never Actually Canonized

St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated every March 17, marking the anniversary of the death of St. Patrick. Although the holiday is a largely secular occasion today, its origins trace back to a Christian feast day honoring the patron saint of Ireland. It’s well documented that the fifth century bishop spread Christianity in the country, but other details about St. Patrick have been obscured by myth. It stands to reason then that people often wonder: Is St. Patrick actually a saint?

Although he is known by his saintly honorific, the Catholic Church has never canonized St. Patrick.

The church’s canonization process wasn’t formalized until the central Middle Ages, explains Sarah Waidler, a visiting assistant professor of Irish language, literature and culture at New York University. Because Patrick lived long before this, there was no procedure to officially declare his sainthood.

Even so, the liturgical calendar for the Catholic Dioceses of the United States designates March 17 as an optional memorial for “Saint Patrick, bishop.”

In lieu of a formal process, Christians in Ireland cemented St. Patrick’s reputation as a saint. Like St. Patrick, most Irish saints originally were not canonized, Waidler says.

“Instead of canonization, most saints in Ireland were recognized at a more grassroots level, with local supporters identifying that person as a saint after death,” she says.

St. Malachy, who died in 1148, became the first Irish saint to be canonized in 1190.

St. Patrick is best known for bringing Christianity to Ireland in the fifth century, according to Diarmuid Wheeler, headmaster of Chelsea Academy, a Catholic elementary and high school in Front Royal, Virginia. Called the “apostle of Ireland” despite the fact he wasn’t actually Irish-born, he is credited with converting the Gaelic Irish from paganism to Christianity. His missionary work involved establishing monasteries and churches across the island in places such as Saul and Armagh, which are now part of Northern Ireland. As the BBC reports, Armagh is considered the Christian capital of Ireland.

“The fact that we have his own works surviving, combined with the political efforts of some of his churches, particularly Armagh, put him in a perfect position to become identified as the main converting saint of Ireland,” Waidler says.

Many legends are also associated with St. Patrick, including that he drove the snakes out of Ireland and that he used a shamrock to teach the Holy Trinity .

St. Patrick is most famously known as the patron saint of Ireland, alongside St. Brigid and St. Columcille. He’s also credited as the patron saint of engineers for introducing new construction techniques to the Irish and the patron saint of Nigeria on account of several Irish missions there dating back to the 1920s.

Most Irish saints founded their own ecclesiastical sites, which would often promote their founder as a patron saint after his or her death, according to Waidler. “These sites could become quite powerful, as was the case with one of the sites associated with Patrick, in Armagh, Northern Ireland, which massively promoted the cult of Patrick in the early Middle Ages,” Waidler says. The Cathedral Church of St. Patrick, Armagh, is still located there today, though the building has been destroyed and rebuilt numerous times in its history.