Iona´s Bittersweet Legacy - No Longer Catholic but Ecumenical

During a trip back home to Scotland about 20 years ago I decided to visit the island of Iona where the Irish monk St. Columba founded a monastery in AD 563. It´s a tiny place - only three miles long and a mile and a half wide – yet without it Christianity would never have spread across Scotland, the north of England and much of western Europe.

None of the original abbey remains although there is a Celtic cross that is about 1,000 years old and a graveyard which is the final resting place of many Scottish, Irish and Norwegian kings. These include Kenneth MacAlpin, the man who united the Scots and Picts, and MacBeth and Duncan, whose lives were used by Shakespeare in his tragedy “MacBeth”.  

It was a lovely day for a visit. The weather was good, gulls were shrieking as they wheeled through the air, there were few people around except me and my daughter and we had the abbey and grounds almost to ourselves. Along with the tang of the sea you could almost smell Iona´s history and  spirituality.

Despite this tranquil setting, Iona has a bloody history. It was targeted by Vikings whose raids in the ninth century eventually led to the abbey being abandoned. Dozens of monks were slaughtered during these attacks and many of the survivors fled to Ireland with their treasures. Centuries later the abbey was finally abandoned following the Reformation which gripped Scotland in the 16th century. The abbey was finally restored in the early 20th century and the Iona Community was established in 1938. 

I am full of admiration for the work of those who undertook this task particularly a Protestant minister called George MacLeod who was the driving force behind it. However, as I walked around I felt a little sad that the abbey was now a place of ecumenical and not purely Catholic worship as it had been for centuries.

However, I took comfort in the fact that not only is mass  still celebrated in the abbey but a permanent Catholic presence was established on Iona for the first time in 400 years with the opening of a Catholic House of Prayer. This building is known as “Cnoc a' Chalmain” in Gaelic and means the “Hill of the Dove”. It was officially opened 1997, the 1400th anniversary year of St Columba's death on Iona. Pilgrims can stay there.

It describes itself as a “peaceful place of prayer for all pilgrims in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament”. Despite my personal misgivings over ecumenicism, the Catholic House of Prayer confirms its adherence to the concept of ecumenicism.

“The Catholic Church has complete commitment to work for unity among Christians. The Papal Encyclical on commitment to Ecumenism, produced in 1995, encourages us to seek new ways of working together and praying together. Without this commitment, we cannot be authentically true to the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” its says on its website. (See link below.)

Should you be planning a visit to Scotland I recommend you make the effort to visit Iona and pay a personal tribute to all those martyrs and pioneers without whose efforts God´s message would never have spread as far as it did.

Website http://www.catholic-iona.com

© John Brander Fitzpatrick 2025