St. Paul our heavenly patron is an early Christian missionary and theologian, known as the Apostle to the Gentiles. Born a Jew in Tarsus, Asia Minor. He trained as Rabbi but earned his living as a tent maker. A zealous Pharisee, he persecuted the first Christian until a vision of Jesus, experienced on the way to Damascus, converted him to Christianity. Three years after he met St. Peter and was henceforth recognized as the 13th Apostle. From his base in Antioch he travelled widely, preaching to the Gentiles. By asserting that non Jewish Disciples of Christ did not have to observe Jewish law, he helped to establish the Christianity as a separate religion rather than a Jewish sect. On journey to Jerusalem, he aroused such hostility among the Jews that a mob gathered, and he was arrested and imprisoned for two years. The circumstances of his death are unknown. Paul’s ministry and religious views are known largely from his letters, or epistles, collected in the New Testament, which are the first Christian theological writing and the source of much Christian doctrines. It is due to Paul not more than anyone else that Christianity became a world religion.