May 11th.

St. Comgall.

He was the founder and first abbot of the Northern Irish monastery of Bangor, near modern Belfast.  A pupil of St. Fintan, he lived as a hermit on the shore of Lough Erne before making his foundation in about 555.   Bangor became the largest monastery in Ireland, and the total size of the community, with its subsidiaries, amounted to some 3,000 persons.   Comgall also trained the great missioner St. Columbanus, who was to take the faith to the Vosges mountains in France, and was an associate of St. Columba on the island of Iona.  With Columba, he preached the Gospel at Inverness to the local chieftain.  When Columba died, Comgall is recorded as saying: “My soul-friend has died, and I am without a head; so you too are without a head, for a man without a soul-friend is a body without a head”.  His relics were kept at Bangor, but in 822 were desecrated by raiders.