St. Patrick’s Festival Birmingham has returned after the hiatus caused by COVID in 2020.

St. Anne’s Church, Digbeth, was the venue on Sunday 13th March 2022 for the Mass, which was followed by an assembling of flags and a pipe band playing outside the Church and processing down the High Street in Digbeth.

The return of the large Parade has had to be delayed as “the High Street is a building site” said Jim Tomlinson, the Secretary of the Board of the St. Patrick’s Festival.

Birmingham, like New York, is one of the places that keeps the Mass central; the heart of St. Patrick’s mission to Ireland way back in the 400s.

The St. Patrick’s Festival Mass in St. Anne’s was celebrated by Father Robert Murphy, the Parish Priest; concelebrated by Father Eamon Carduff, Chaplain to the Irish Community; and Monsignor Daniel McHugh, Co-ordinator of Ethnic Chaplaincies.

In the Homily, Mgr McHugh spoke of St. Patrick as “a humble, pious, gentle man, whose love and total devotion to Christ in God should be a shining example to each of us. So complete was his trust in God, and of the importance of his mission, he feared nothing, not even death.”

"Patrick entered an Ireland full of paganism and idol worship. Mike Pettengill in an article “Reclaiming the Great Missionary” writes “We Christians have allowed the modern, secular customs of St. Patrick’s Day to steal away one of the greatest Missionaries in Christian history and reduce his memory to leprechauns, green beer and fictional tales.”

In concluding his Homily Monsignor McHugh thanked the Board of the St. Patrick’s Festival in Birmingham for keeping the Mass in St. Anne’s at the heart of the Celebration.

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