Cadfarch is remembered in Welsh tradition as a saint of the sixth century. The sources that name him place him among the early holy men of Wales whose lives helped establish the Church in the land after the age of the first missionaries.
His memory is especially bound to Penegoes, a few miles south and southeast of Machynlleth in what was once Montgomeryshire and is now Powys. There the parish church is dedicated to him, and the surrounding community itself came to be called Cadfarch. That place lies near the borders of Ceredigion and Gwynedd and includes the settlements of Penegoes, Forge, Derwenlas, Abergwydol, Aberhosan, and Melinbyrhedyn. Through this dedication the name of the saint has remained living in the landscape and in the prayer of the local Church.
Beyond the fact of his sixth-century witness and the cult centered on Penegoes, the surviving notices do not preserve a detailed chronology of birth, family, or manner of death. What they do attest is that the faithful of that region kept his feast and sought his intercession, regarding him as a true servant of Christ whose holiness marked the soil of Wales.
May Saint Cadfarch obtain for us a steadfast love of the local Church and the grace to keep the faith alive where we live.