Welcome to the Cathedral
Church of St Patrick, Killala
Vision statement
With God's help, we will ensure that the Cathedral Church of St Patrick, Killala, functions structurally sound, as a place of prayer, worship and beauty able to bear gracious and appropriate witness to the power of Christ’s message, brought by Patrick to Ireland.
The Cathedral Church of St Patrick, Killala, is one of Ireland’s smallest cathedrals but also one of its oldest. "The Episcopal SEE of KILLALA appears to have been founded between the years 434 and 441, by St. Patrick, who, during that period, was propagating the faith of Christianity in the province of Connaught; and built a church at this place, called Kill-Aladh, over which he placed one of his disciples, St. Muredach, as bishop." (Samuel Lewis, writing in his 1837 Topographical Dictionary).
According to one significant strand in the Patrician tradition, Foclut (Foghill) near Killala was the site of Patrick's first landing in Ireland and the hills above the town the place where he worked as a shepherd boy and developed his great love of this country, its people, and its language, which eventually led to his returning as a missionary.with other Christians in Killala and North Mayo.
In the centuries following Patrick's return to north Mayo to found his cathedral at Killala, a monastic settlement grew up which by mediaeval times had become a town. That this cathedral lies at the hub of an ancient ecclesiastical centre is only just now beginning to be recognised. Killala is a medaeval town and one of the oldest in the west of Ireland.
We have inherited our founder St Patrick's mission to spread the gospel in North Mayo. We undertake this mission as a community-facing church very conscious of the pre-reformation origins of the beautiful building in which we worship, the continuity of worship in this place from earliest Christian times in Ireland, and therefore of the joint heritage which, as Church of Ireland Cathedral and Parish, we share.