Ignatius Press has just published the first comprehensive biography in more than 1,000 years of the beloved fifth- and sixth-century Irish saint Kevin of Glendalough. Saint Kevin of Glendalough: Hermit, Abbot, and Miracle Worker introduces a wider audience to this remarkable saint — part-evangelist, part-hermit — who founded a monastery, worked miracles, communed with animals, and inspired thousands to leave everything to follow Christ.

The book’s author, Kevin McKenzie, visited the places where the saint lived and personally translated the 1,000-year-old Latin life of St. Kevin into English. In addition, McKenzie set out to walk from Ireland to Rome to better understand his patron saint’s own pilgrimage to Rome.

The Register spoke to McKenzie from his home in St. Louis, where he works as an author of books on saints and leads pilgrimages to Italy and Ireland.

Researching the Life of St. Kevin

McKenzie spent nearly a decade researching the life of this seemingly obscure saint. His first research trip to Ireland was in 2015, and he completed the book in September 2024. “I did four trips all told,” he explains. “In between, there was a lot of reading and writing. Over 1,400 years separate us from Kevin, and he never had the international notoriety of a Patrick or a Benedict. If the story of his life was a trail, it had become not only thin, but overgrown and hidden in many places. So I put on my Sherlock Holmes hat and hunted long and hard for the details of his life.”

So, what did his research uncover? Kevin grew up in a world vastly different from our own. In ancient and early medieval Ireland, there were no towns or cities. The Irish were nomadic, belonging to clans that each had an elected king of sorts, laying claim to loosely defined territories.

“It took a while for me to learn all about the world of fifth-century Celtic Ireland — so different from ours,” he said. “At the same time, I was doing everything I could to learn about Kevin himself. What is written about him is in Latin and Gaelic, and there are few translations. There are also many false ‘legends’ about him, invented by rival Irish dynasties attempting to cement their claims to the kingship, or by tour guides trying to get a laugh. So I had to learn about Kevin’s world and life and learn to distinguish fact from fiction. It took a while.”

“When I was 7 or 8,” he recalls, “I remember asking my parents who the first Kevin was. They told me that St. Kevin was a monk who lived in Glendalough, Ireland. I immediately wanted to go there and learn more. But Ireland is a long way from Missouri, and I forgot about that dream.” That changed in 2008, when he had the opportunity to visit Ireland — and, by chance, found himself working near Glendalough.

After that first visit to Glendalough, McKenzie says “a fire was lit” in his heart to discover as much as possible about his patron saint. “I wanted to learn more about Kevin’s story and tell it to others. So I started collecting anything and everything I could lay my hands on that talked about St. Kevin.”

This included translating Kevin’s life from Latin to English. “I think what most surprised me were the tender details about Kevin’s character that came through such an ancient text that shows clearly that Kevin was a tremendously compassionate person, ready to drop everything to help the poor or the suffering,” McKenzie says. “He was humble, refusing the acclaim that others often gave him. He was impetuous, running away from school to live alone in the wild.”

But, intriguingly, McKenzie also discovered a man who was far from perfect.

“It was refreshing to see Kevin’s faults and foibles recounted in the ancient Latin text,” he says. “Likewise, reading through it felt like I was getting to know him for the first time, and he is equal parts very holy and very eccentric.”

Walking in the Footsteps of St. Kevin

“One of the ancient stories of Kevin says that he walked to Rome to ask the Pope to make his monastery at Glendalough a special place of pilgrimage,” says McKenzie. “Three years ago, I was able to get away for three months. I didn’t have much money, but that would ensure my pilgrimage was more like Kevin’s. I slept in the wild every night, unless there was someone to put me up. When you walk, you see so much that you’d miss from a car or a plane. Yes, landscapes change, but many things stay just the same as they were a millennium ago.”

He continues, “There is no record of the route that Kevin took on his pilgrimage, so I simply looked at a map and guessed which way I thought he would take. I didn’t want to walk on roads, so I tried to stay to the footpaths, which are abundant in Europe.”

He recounts how, on getting lost along the southern coast of Anglesey Island in Wales, he came across a tiny chapel on a tidal island in the middle of a bay. It is called Eglys Cwyfan.

“There was something about this little chapel that really drew me,” he remembers, so he stayed there working on his book and praying. Later that day, while visiting another ancient chapel nearby he spoke to a local who revealed that Eglys Cwyfan means “Church of Kevin.”

“It’s like St. Kevin had drawn me to his chapel somehow! Later, I came across another church dedicated to Kevin beside a fabulous waterfall in North Wales, and to the East, there is an intricately carved cross called Maen Achwyfan (“Stone of Kevin”). Coming across these sites linked to Kevin showed me that I was on the right path and that he was interceding for me.”

‘A Fascinatingly Holy Man’

McKenzie hopes that his book will reintroduce St. Kevin to a modern audience, bringing his remarkable story to life. He wants readers — especially children approaching the sacrament of confirmation — to be inspired by Kevin’s radical love for God and others.

“I hope that I have ‘dusted off’ St. Kevin’s story for everyone who reads this book,” he says. “I hope he comes to life for readers in these pages — and that many children who read his story are inspired by his radical love for God and his fellow man.”

Kevin’s eccentricity, he believes, is part of what makes his holiness so captivating. “Kevin was not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill person. God built on Kevin’s eccentricity and made of him a fascinatingly holy man,” says McKenzie. “That’s what draws me to the saints. Their lives are each so different and captivating. Each of us, too, is called to a holiness entirely our own.”

More than just a historical account, the book also serves as a personal tribute to St. Kevin, particularly for those who share his name. McKenzie hopes it might even spark a renewed devotion among Catholics named Kevin.

“St. Kevin is a spiritual ancestor to all of us Kevins,” he explains. “When you learn the details about the person you were named after, and it turns out he was both a wild and holy man who ran away from school at the age of 12 to live in a wild mountain valley, lived off herbs and fish, fought druids and murderers and sea monsters and helped heal many broken hearts — this is what a saint can do. This is what God calls us to. May he intercede for those of us named Kevin, and for all!”