St. Methodius

St. Methodius was born around 815 at Thessalonica in the Byzantine Empire, and died on 6 April 885 in Great Moravia (in modern Central Europe). Together with his younger brother St. Cyril, he is honored as one of the two great 'Apostles to the Slavs.' The brothers, both learned churchmen, were sent from Constantinople in the 860s to evangelize the Slavic peoples of Moravia in their own tongue.

To do so they devised an alphabet (the Glagolitic) suited to the Slavic language and translated the Scriptures and the liturgy into what became known as Old Church Slavonic — a pioneering work that shaped the faith and culture of the Slavic nations. After Cyril's death at Rome in 869, Methodius carried on the mission alone as archbishop, enduring imprisonment and opposition for using the vernacular in worship, which the popes ultimately approved. Both brothers are venerated as saints, and in 1980 Pope St. John Paul II proclaimed them co-patrons of Europe alongside St. Benedict.