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Saints of the Church
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20-06-2013 7:32pm#1New tread to discuss and remember those who gave their lives to defend the Catholic Faith.
20th of June.
Blesseds Anthony Turner, John Gavan, William Harcourt
hanged, drawn, and quartered on 20 June 1679 at Tyburn, London, England
Blessed Anthony Turner
Son of a Protestant minister. Educated at Cambridge University. Convert to Catholicism. Studied in Rome, Italy. Joined the Jesuits in Flanders, Belgium. Ordained in 1661. He returned to England and worked in Worcester. Arrested in the Titus Oates Plot, he was convicted of treason based on perjured evidence; one of the trial rules was that no Catholic could be believed in court. Martyr.
Blessed John Gavan
Educated at the Jesuit College, Saint Omer, France. Priest. Returned to England to minister to covert Catholics in Staffordshire. Took his final vows as a Jesuit in 1678 in Boscobel, England. Eloquent and effective preacher. Betrayed to the English priest hunters by an apostate priest named Schibber, he was arrested on 29 January 1679 during the persecutions connected to the Titus Oates Plot, a non-existent plan to assassinate Charles II. He defended himself and four fellow Jesuits in their trial at the Old Bailey, but to no avail; the trial rules included the principal that no Catholic could be believed in court. Martyr
William Harcourt
Studied at the Jesuit College, Saint-Omer, France. Joined the Jesuits at Watten in 1632. Priest. Returned to England in 1644 to minister to covert Catholics. Worked in London for 35 years, using the names William Harcourt and/or William Waring. Jesuit superior for London in 1678. Arrested in May 1678, accused of being part of the Titus Oates Plot; lodged in Newgate prison. He went to trial on 13 June 1679, but since the verdict was already decided, and since the judge announced that no Catholic witness could be believed, he was quickly convicted. Martyr.
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St. Aloysius was born in Castiglione, Italy. The first words St. Aloysius spoke were the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary. He was destined for the military by his father (who was in service to Philip II), but by the age of 9 Aloysius had decided on a religious life, and made a vow of perpetual virginity. To safeguard himself from possible temptation, he would keep his eyes persistently downcast in the presence of women. St. Charles Borromeo gave him his first Holy Communion. A kidney disease prevented St. Aloysius from a full social life for a while, so he spent his time in prayer and reading the lives of the saints. Although he was appointed a page in Spain, St. Aloysius kept up his many devotions and austerities, and was quite resolved to become a Jesuit. His family eventually moved back to Italy, where he taught catechism to the poor. When he was 18, he joined the Jesuits, after finally breaking down his father, who had refused his entrance into the order. He served in a hospital during the plague of 1587 in Milan, and died from it at the age of 23, after receiving the last rites from St. Robert Bellarmine. The last word he spoke was the Holy Name of Jesus. St. Robert wrote the Life of St. Aloysius.
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A saint I greatly admire. Tomorrow we commemorate his feast day.
Utopia one of his best known works. Great man.
St. Thomas More, Martyr (Patron of Lawyers) St. Thomas More was born at London in 1478. After a thorough grounding in religion and the classics, he entered Oxford to study law. Upon leaving the university he embarked on a legal career which took him to Parliament. In 1505, he married his beloved Jane Colt who bore him four children, and when she died at a young age, he married a widow, Alice Middleton, to be a mother for his young children. A wit and a reformer, this learned man numbered Bishops and scholars among his friends, and by 1516 wrote his world-famous book "Utopia". He attracted the attention of Henry VIII who appointed him to a succession of high posts and missions, and finally made him Lord Chancellor in 1529. However, he resigned in 1532, at the height of his career and reputation, when Henry persisted in holding his own opinions regarding marriage and the supremacy of the Pope. The rest of his life was spent in writing mostly in defense of the Church. In 1534, with his close friend, St. John Fisher, he refused to render allegiance to the King as the Head of the Church of England and was confined to the Tower. Fifteen months later, and nine days after St. John Fisher's execution, he was tried and convicted of treason. He told the court that he could not go against his conscience and wished his judges that "we may yet hereafter in heaven merrily all meet together to everlasting salvation." And on the scaffold, he told the crowd of spectators that he was dying as "the King's good servant-but God's first." He was beheaded on July 6, 1535. His feast day is June 22nd.0 -
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Erasmus said of John Fisher: "He is the one man at this time who is incomparable for uprightness of life, for learning and for greatness of soul."
St. John Fisher was born in Beverly, Yorkshire, in 1459, and educated at Cambridge, from which he received his Master of Arts degree in 1491. He occupied the vicarage of Northallerton, 1491-1494; then he became proctor of Cambridge University. In 1497, he was appointed confessor to Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, and became closely associated in her endowments to Cambridge; he created scholarships, introduced Greek and Hebrew into the curriculum, and brought in the world-famous Erasmus as professor of Divinity and Greek. In 1504, he became Bishop of Rochester and Chancellor of Cambridge, in which capacity he also tutored Prince Henry who was to become Henry VIII. St. John was dedicated to the welfare of his diocese and his university. From 1527, this humble servant of God actively opposed the King's divorce proceedings against Catherine, his wife in the sight of God, and steadfastly resisted the encroachment of Henry on the Church. Unlike the other Bishops of the realm, St. John refused to take the oath of succession which acknowledged the issue of Henry and Anne as the legitimate heir to the throne, and he was imprisoned in the tower in April 1534. The next year he was made a Cardinal by Paul III and Henry retaliated by having him beheaded within a month. A half hour before his execution, this dedicated scholar and churchman opened his New Testament for the last time and his eyes fell on the following words from St. John's Gospel: "Eternal life is this: to know You, the only true God, and Him Whom You have sent, Jesus Christ. I have given You glory on earth by finishing the work You gave me to do. Do You now, Father, give me glory at Your side". Closing the book, he observed: "There is enough learning in that to last me the rest of my life." His feast day is June 22.0 -
Joseph Cafasso was born at Castelnuovo d'Asti in the Piedmont, Italy, of peasant parents. He studied at the seminary at Turin, and was ordained in 1833. He continued his theological studies at the seminary and university at Turin and then at the Institute of St. Franics, and despite a deformed spine, became a brilliant lecturer in moral theology there. He was a popular teacher, actively opposed Jansenism, and fought state intrusion into Church affairs. He succeeded Luigi Guala as rector of the Institute in 1848 and made a deep impression on his young priest students with his holiness and insistence on discipline and high standards. He was a sought-after confessor and spiritual adviser, and ministered to prisoners, working to improve their terrible conditions. He met Don Bosco in 1827 and the two became close friends. It was through Joseph's encouragement that Bosco decided his vocation was working with boys. Joseph was his adviser, worked closely with him in his foundations, and convinced others to fund and found religious institutes and charitable organizations. Joseph died on June 23 at Turin and was canonized in 1947. His feast day is June 23rd0 -
English Jesuit martyr. A nephew of the Jesuit Henry Garnet, he was born in Southwark, England, and studied for the priesthood at St. Omer, France, and Valladolid, Spain. Initially ordained as a secular priest, hejoined the Jesuits in 1604 and worked to advance the Catholic cause in Warwick until his arrest in 1606. He was exiled after months of torture but returned in 1607 and was soon arrested. He was hanged at Tyburn. Beatified in 1929, he was canonized in 1970 and is included among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.
Thomas Garnet was born into a prominent family in Southwark. His uncle, Henry Garnet, was the superior of the Jesuits in England. Richard Garnet, Thomas's father, was at Balliol College, Oxford, at the time when great severity began to be used against Catholics. His example provided leadership to a generation of Oxford men which was to produce Edmund Campion, Robert Persons[1] and other English Catholics.
Because English colleges had been turned over to Protestants, English Catholics had to go to the continent for their education. Thomas, at age 17, was amongst the first students of Saint Omer's Jesuit College (at Stonyhurst since 1794) in 1593. By 1595 he was considered fit for Saint Albans, the new English seminary at Valladolid. In January he set out from Calais with five others from Calais, John Copley, William Worthington, John Ivreson, James Thomson, and Henry Mompesson.
They were lucky in finding as a travelling companion, a Jesuit Father William Baldwin, who was going to Spain in disguise under the alias Ottavio Fuscinelli, but misfortunes soon began. After severe weather in the English Channel, they found themselves obliged to run for shelter to The Downs, where their vessel was searched by men from some of Queen Elizabeth's ships, and they were discovered hiding in the hold. They were immediately made prisoners and treated very roughly. They were sent round the Nore up to London, and were examined by Charles, second Lord Howard of Effingham, the Lord Admiral.
After this Father Baldwin was sent to Bridewell prison, where one of those incidents occurred that were so representative of the treacherousness of the Elizabethan age. He met a confessor[2] named James Atkinson who, under torture, had divulged names. He was riven by remorse and terror that he would be tortured again, this time to death and would die unabsolved for his betrayals.
This placed Father Baldwin in a real quandary. Was Atkinson a spy? In appealing for a priest to hear his confession was he angling to trick Baldwin into revealing himself as a priest? In the end he heard Atkinson's confession, whose joy at absolution was luminous. Later, Atkinson would suffer further tortures, and die from this cruelty, or shortly thereafter
Meantime his young companions had been handed over to Archbishop Whitgift, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, having found that they encouraged one another, sent them one by one to different Protestant bishops or doctors.
Only the youngest, Mompesson, conformed. The rest eventually escaped and returned to their colleges on the continent after many adventures. It is not known for certain what happened to young Garnet, but it seems likely that he was the youth confined to the house of Dr. Richard Edes. He fell ill and was sent home under bond to return to custody at Oxford by a certain day.
The boy escaped yet again, and to avoid trouble he had then to keep away even from his own father. At last he reached Saint Omer again, and then went to Valladolid in 1596, after many escapades.
Father Garnet was now imprisoned first in the Gatehouse, then in the Tower, where he was tortured in order to make him give evidence against Henry Garnet, his famous uncle, superior of the English Jesuits, who had recently admitted him into the Society of Jesus. The authorities suspected that Henry Garnet was implicated in the plot. Henry Garnet was later executed because of his (suspected) involvement in the plot.
Though no connection with the conspiracy could be proved against Thomas, he was kept in the Tower of London for seven months, at the end of which time he was suddenly put on board ship with forty-six other priests, and a royal proclamation, dated 10 July 1606, was read to them, threatening death if they returned. They were then carried across the Channel and set ashore in Flanders.
Father Garnet now went to his old school at Saint Omer, then to Brussels to see the superior of the Jesuits, Father Baldwin, his companion in the adventures of 1595. Father Baldwin sent him to the English Jesuit novitiate, Saint John's, Leuven, in which he was the first novice to be received.
In September 1607, he was sent back to England, but was arrested six weeks later by an apostate[3] priest called Rouse. This was the time of King James' controversy with Cardinal Bellarmine about the Oath of Allegiance. Garnet was offered his life if he would take the oath, but he steadfastly refused, and was executed at the age of 32, at Tyburn, protesting that he was "the happiest man this day alive". His relics, which were preserved at Saint Omer, were lost during the French Revolution. St. Thomas Garnet's Independent School in Boscombe, Bournemouth, is dedicated to the saint.0 -
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