Who were St. Patrick, Mother Teresa?

Wisdom Quarterly; Christopher Nyerges (Voice in the Wilderness), Ellen Snorthland (pasadenaweekly.com)

How great we make our gods when we deify and glorify human beings like Paddy, Terry, and even Zeus (Maha Brahma) and his "sons" (putras like Jesus, Sakka, Michael) as seen here looking in all directions in Thailand (raredog/flickr)

 

Devi wee person (anaan)

Who was Saint Patrick?  Really, who was he?  [He was n]ot the mythological story we tell to our children each March 17 in sing-song voices: 

 

"Saint Patrick wore a green suit, talked to leprechauns (he was probably drunk at the time), and while trying to convert the pagans with a shamrock, he marched all the snakes out of Ireland." Will the real Patrick please stand up?
 

His real name was Maewyn Succat, born around 385 A.D., somewhere in Scotland, or possibly somewhere else, as there is conflicting historical data on his exact date and place of birth.   His baptismal name was Patricius [aristocrat, patrician]. 
 

St. Patrick's Day parade (sacbee.com)

Around age 16, he was sold into slavery in Ireland and worked for the next six years as a shepherd.  Keep in mind that human slavery, as well as human sacrifice, was considered normal for those times.

After his six years in slavery, he believed that an angel came to him in a dream, prompting him to escape and seek out his homeland.  He actually walked about 200 miles to the coast, where his dream indicated a ship would also be waiting for him.  He successfully escaped, and spent the next 20 years of his life as a monk in Marmoutier Abbey. There he again received a celestial visitation, this time calling him to return to the land where he’d been enslaved, though now with a mission as a priest and converter [not unlike Constantine, who created "Catholicism" by the sword]. 

 

St. Patrick, the Vatican's man in Ireland

Patrick was called to Rome in 432, where Pope Celestine bequeathed the honor of Bishop upon him before he left on his mission.

 

Patrick returned to Ireland not alone, but with 24 supporters and  followers.  They arrived in Ireland in the winter of 432. In the Spring, Patrick decided to confront the high King of Tara, the most powerful King in Ireland. More

 

Ex-nun shares her heart out about life in Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity

Ellen Snortland ("An Unquenchable Thirst," March 14, 2013)

Not a saint yet; needs more miracles

Sharing a birthday with Mother Teresa, an international female icon, made me more aware of her than most of my non-Catholic friends.

 

Mother Teresa is regarded as one of the greatest women on the planet by a lot of people who generally wouldn’t revere a religious leader. I’m not one of them.
 
There’s such a dearth of recognizable female leadership that Mother Teresa, who was really one of the world’s biggest tools of global patriarchy, gets conveniently trotted out as a beacon of women’s leadership whenever needed. How tragic! To me and other feminist men and women, using Mother Teresa, a key player in rolling back reproductive rights, as a role model for women is akin to Rush Limbaugh being made a poster boy for feminist causes.
  

When friend Carol Franzblau, newly transplanted from the East Coast, mentioned that her dear friend, Mary Johnson, had written a revealing book about her [many years] as a sister of the Missionaries of Charity (MC) [in the Bronx and Calcutta, India], my anti-Mother Teresa radar clicked on. During Women’s History Month, Johnson, who joined Mother Teresa’s order in 1979, has included Pasadena in her national tour to promote the paperback version of her book, An Unquenchable Thirst. More

• The Zen of painting - the "little things" can be important
• What would the (LA native) Tongva do? - Meeting on Hahamongna raises more questions on park's future use.
• Who exactly is Pope Francis I?