(From Wadding’s Annales Minorum, xxi. 208)

In our convent of Elphin[1], some English soldiers seized a certain priest of our Order and some other persons. 

They pressed a layman, who was one of their captives, to tell something of the plots which they said he had entered into with others against the Queen of England; but he protested he could tell nothing but the truth, and that there were no such plots. 

So they determined to hang him. 

He begged that he might first be allowed to make his confession to the priest.

This they granted readily because they thought that if the priest was put to the torture, he would reveal what was told him. 

As soon as the confession was ended the layman was hanged, and then they asked the priest, who was also to be hanged, if he had learned anything of the business in the confession. 

He answered in the negative, and refused to make known anything which he might have heard in the sacred tribunal.

They offered him life and freedom if he would reveal what he had heard, and threatened him with torture if he refused. 

He answered that he could not:

Immediately they knotted a cord round his head, and putting a piece of wood through it, slowly twisted it so tight that at length, after he had endured this torment for a long time, his skull was broken in and his brain crushed. 

All this time he was praying to God and to the Blessed Virgin Mary. 

He died on the spot. 

I have seen and examined ocular witnesses of this fact, who were then serving in that body of English soldiers. 

But they did not remember the name of the friar or the exact year. 

It was about 1577. Ward gives 1579 as the date of his death.

[1] 1 Founded by Cornelius, Bishop of Elphin, in 1450. Ward says O’Dowd was put to death at Moyne.

Please pray for final perseverance for all of us!
May the martyrs of old inspire us all.