Saint Patrick was born in Britain (now Great Britain) around the year 386. His given name was Maewyn Succat. His father was a Christian and served as a diaconate. When he was very young, his house was ransacked by vandals who forcibly took him to the neighboring island, Ireland, where he was sold and forced to work as a slave.
For the next six years, Patricio practically lived outdoors, tending sheep, until he had the opportunity to escape and return home. After having regained his freedom, he began the spiritual path that would lead him to the priesthood and, later, in adulthood, to being ordained, precisely, bishop of the lands in which he suffered slavery.
Only thanks to those bitter years of captivity, Patricio was able to rediscover his faith – or truly know it – since he had retained almost nothing of what he was taught in childhood, as he himself admits in his Confessions: “I didn’t believe in the true God.” Despite that, that God whom the saint called ‘one and true’ would touch his heart and rescue him; not only from the power of perverse men but from the heavy chains that imprisoned his soul: “I was like a stone in a deep mine; and He who is mighty came and, in his mercy, lifted me up and set me on a wall.”