Who is Saint Columba?

In the days before the great schism, when the Church in Britain was fully Orthodox, the Irish monk Columba became one of the first missionaries to Scotland. Columba came from a noble Irish family and was the founder of several churches and monasteries in Ireland. About 563, with several companions, he established himself on the island of Iona where he founded a monastic center for the evangelization of Scotland. He succeeded in converting Brude, king of the Picts, and in 574 the new king of the Scots of Dal Riada came to Iona to be chrismated by Columba. Iona continued to be a center for Scottish Christianity until it was destroyed during the reformation. So it was that Columba became one of the founders of ancient British Orthodoxy. St. Columba’s Parish celebrates the reinstitution in the twenty-first century of British Orthodox tradition.