A solitary walk from Glendalough through the Wicklow Gap to the Solas Bhríde Centre in Kildare reveals that while Patrick is ‘the saint of the Church’, Brigid is ‘the saint of the people’

One way that the pandemic has affected me is to prompt more walking. But if the struggle for gender equality in the Church means anything, I need to exercise it myself, and so it was that after a couple of pilgrimages to the sites of male saints, I decided that my next pilgrimage must be in honour of a woman. When I heard from a Brigidine sister that the fifth-century Irish saint, Brigid of Kildare, had been ordained as a bishop, my ears pricked up.

My friend advised me to make the pilgrimage for St Brigid’s Day, 1 February, when a week of events begin in Kildare, and suggested that I could begin in Glendalough. It was an odd time of year to begin a pilgrimage (long before Chaucer’s April-showers weather), but at least it meant that this walk would be ­different in more ways than just being female-centred. Winter not summer. Ireland not Britain. Self-planned, not following a prepared route.

When I began my pilgrimage in frosty January, I was just beginning to discover Brigid through a little book (now out of print but being updated), Rekindling the Flame: A Pilgrimage in the Footsteps of Brigid of Kildare by Rita Minehan, whom I later met in Kildare. Brigid had been born a slave, daughter of a slave mother and a chieftain father, but became a towering figure in Irish history, travelling the country and setting up innovative religious houses all over the land. In Kildare, she founded a double monastery (i.e. monks and nuns), which became a model for future European monasteries, exceptional not only for its hospitality and advocacy of the poor, but also for its learning and artistic excellence. It had a dairy, a hospital, schools and a high-quality scriptorium.