Saint John Plessington was born around the year 1637 in Lancashire, England to a family who were persecuted for their religious and political beliefs. He was educated by the Jesuits, also in Spain and France. He was ordained on March 25, 1662. He returned to England the following year and ministered to new Catholics, and he hid under the name of William Scarisbrick. He was imprisoned for two months and then executed for the crime of being a priest. He is one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. He died on July 19, 1679 in Boughton, England. He was canonized on October 25, 1970 by Pope Paul VI.
"But I know it will be said that a priest ordained by authority derived from the See of Rome is, by the Law of the Nation, to die as a Traytor, but if that be so what must become of all the Clergymen of the Church of England, for the first Protestant Bishops had their Ordination from those of the Church of Rome, or not at all, as appears by their own writers so that Ordination comes derivatively from those now living." ~Saint John Plessington as he was about to be martyred
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