Saints of the Day & More

Columba, the most famous of the saints associated with Scotland, was actually an Irishman of the O'Neill or O'Donnell clan, born about the year 521 at Garton, County Donegal, in north Ireland. Of royal lineage on both sides, his father, Fedhlimidh, or Phelim, was great-grandson to Niall of the Nine Hostages, Overlord of Ireland, and connected with the Dalriada princes of southwest Scotland; his mother, Eithne, was descended from a king of Leinster. The child was baptized Colum, or Columba.[1] In later life he was given the name of Columcille or Clumkill, that is, Colum of the Cell or Church, an appropriate title for one who became the founder of so many monastic cells and religious establishments. As soon as he was old enough, Columba was taken from the care of his priest-guardian at Tulach-Dugblaise, or Temple Douglas, to St. Finnian's training school at Moville, at the head of Strangford lough. He was about twenty, and a deacon, when he left to study in the school of Lein...

Father John Ogilvie came from a noble family. He was born in Drum-na-Kelth (Scotland) in 1579 and was educated in Calvinism. At thirteen, his father sent him to France, Italy and Germany to give a more complete education. They had their first contacts with Catholicism as religious disputes were very popular in those places. He converted to Catholicism and was received into the Church of Scotland College of Louvain in 1596, seventeen. Embracing the Catholic faith meant for John to break with the family and the loss of support that she received, a waiver to a brilliant career and the pursuit reserved for traitors. On November 15, 1599 entered the Jesuit novitiate in Brno, studied philosophy at Gratz, was a professor at the Jesuit college in Vienna and eventually studied theology at Olmütz, being ordained a priest in Paris in 1610. After three years of pastoral life in the city of Rouen got permission to go to England. He arrived in Scotland, under the guidance of an ex, dedicated to hors...