May 27, 2022
The sixth-century bishop St. Augustine of Canterbury (d. 605) is famous for his missionary work in England. (He is not to be confused with St. Augustine of Hippo, the great Church thinker of the fourth century.) Augustine was the prior or abbot of a monastery in Rome. In 596 the Pope, St. Gregory the Great, chose him to lead a group of thirty monks on a missionary journey to England. (There were some scattered Christian communities there, but the land as…