Comments of the Week

St Augustine didn’t bring the Gospel to Britain

SIR – In your leading article, “The cost of unity” (September 23), you state that “St Gregory the Great sent out St Augustine of Canterbury and 40 companions to take the Gospel to Britain.”

In fact, the Gospel was already fully inculturated in Britain and the arrival of St Augustine in 597, following the earlier death of St David (587), the first Bishop of Menevia, and St Columba of Iona (597), coincided with the closing years of the “Golden Age” of the Celtic saints. This had witnessed the evangelisation of the native British population, and their conversion to the Catholic faith, during the 5th and 6th centuries.