It happened after the death of Saint Comgall, abbot of Bangor, that his familia came to Saint Fintán and said to him:
‘You are given three choices, to wit: come with us and be the abbot of Bangor after Comgall’.
Fintán replied to them:
‘I shall not encroach on the place of another, nor on the fruit of his labour. I shall be in the place that the Lord will give me, with my monachi, living off the labour of our hands’.
And, again, they said to him:
‘This place will be given to you, and you shall be a monachus of Saint Comgall’.
Fintán said:
‘So long as Colum Cille has not received me, I shall not have another abbot but the Lord’.
The third time the familia of Comgall said to him:
‘If you do not accept all these, go away from this place’.
Fintán said to them:
‘I will do that when I will commit this place to the man who entrusted it to me, namely Áed Gophan’.
They said:
‘You fetch that man,
Then Fintán arose with five men and set out on the road to go to Rome to fetch Áed Gophan. When he had gone out a little while from the locus across one field, they saw Áed Gophan coming towards them after twelve years in exile, and at the same hour they returned at once to their home. Then Fintán said to them:
‘After our departure your locus will not grow greater, nor will it have a parrochia, and the sea will not give it its fruit’.