History of the Shrine
Catholic roots in St. Patrick go back to 1834, when a simple log church served southern Clark County — first by Jesuit missionaries, then by a resident pastor from 1846. A brick church was built in 1860, followed by a frame church in 1903.
In 1935, Fr. Francis O’Duignan arrived — himself born in County Longford, Ireland — to find the church barely standing. Rather than simply repair it, he dreamed of building a true shrine to the town’s namesake, honoring its Irish heritage.
To fund the project, Fr. O’Duignan and the postmaster created the famous shamrock postmark in 1936 — ‘St. Patrick, Missouri: The Only One in the World’ — and mailed hundreds of St. Patrick’s Day greetings to people with Irish surnames found in big-city phone books, asking for donations. Local high school typing classes later helped send thousands of letters a year. The campaign took 20 years.
In 1938, Fr. O’Duignan made a pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick, the holy mountain in Ireland, and brought home an altar stone from its summit, a flagstone worn smooth by generations of pilgrims’ feet, and a chalice from Lough Derg — all destined for the new shrine.
The first Mass was celebrated in the shrine in the autumn of 1956. On St. Patrick’s Day 1957, Bishop Joseph M. Marling dedicated it before a crowd of some 10,000, while a plane called the Spirit of Ireland showered shamrocks from above.
The yearly March 17th festival continues to this day, along with a long-held Fourth of July gathering tradition.
Learn more at the Shrine’s official site: saintpatrickshrine.com