On 16th September, Scotland celebrates the Feast of St Ninian. Mr Cumming, DHT at St Ninian's HS in Giffnock, reflects on the impact of this important Scottish saint.

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When Pope Benedict XVI first visited Britain in 2010, he arrived on 16th September, which is Saint Ninian's Feast Day. The Pontiff was welcomed to Edinburgh where a St Ninian's Day parade had been organised; this increased the awareness of this great saint.

Saint Ninian was described as the man "who first brought the Christian faith" to the country around 397 AD, when he is said to have established a religious community at Whithorn in Galloway. History tells us that Saint Ninian studied in Rome and was eventually ordained a bishop. He set up his monastery in the south of Scotland and this was known as Candida Casa, from the Latin meaning "White House". The name refers to the stone used to construct it as well as the whitewash used to paint it, and has survived as the modern name, Whithorn. It was from this base that he is said to have set about proclaiming the Gospel to the Southern Picts.

The first historical reference to Ninian of Whithorn came from the Northumbrian scholar and monk Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written around 731 AD. He described him as a Briton who was instructed in Rome and noted that his church was made of stone, which was unusual at the time.

Over the centuries his tomb at Whithorn became one of the centres of Christian pilgrimage and was also an important place of worship for the Scots Royal family. In the 14th Century it is said a dying King Robert the Bruce went there to pray for a cure from leprosy. Two centuries later, King James IV spent eight days walking to the shrine, and is said to have distributed money to the poor as he travelled.

In Saint Ninian’s High School, we seek to promote the Gospel values that Saint Ninian lived as a way of life. It is our belief that these should be experienced in the daily life of the school – in the classroom, in the corridor, in the extra-curricular life of the school, in the relationships between pupils and staff and between pupil and pupil. The success of a pupil’s education is measured not simply in terms of academic performance but in terms of the depth and quality of the formation of the young person ensuring the fullest possible development of their individual capacities at each stage of their journey through school. 

The life that Saint Ninian lived is something we hope all of our young people will aspire to and what Catholic Education strives to achieve.  Saint Ninian’s High School aims to plant a seed of true wisdom, knowledge and goodness in the hearts and minds of our young people. Our vision and prayer is that this seed will fall on the rich soil of their intelligence, talents, gifts, generosity and compassion, and that it will produce its crop a hundredfold in the way they live and in what they achieve in the future.