St. Nicholas Owen, S.J., died a martyr in the English capital in 1606, when he was tortured in the Tower of London. Nicholas was born in Oxford and was son of a carpenterWalter, from whom he learned his trade. He was also a craftsman and bricklayer. Around the age of 30, he was accepted as a brother in the Society of Jesus.
The Jesuit brother 'specialized' in building hiding places and shelters for the persecuted clergy in England at the beginning of the 17th century. According to the Roman Martyrology, "St. Nicholas Owen, a religious of the Society of Jesus and a martyr, created shelters for the reception of priests. For this he was imprisoned and cruelly tortured".
St. Nicholas Owen was canonized in 1970 by Pope St. Paul VI as one of the "....40 martyrs of England and Wales. His father, Walter Owen, knew the execution of St. Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England, in 1535, and that of the Bishop of Rochester, St. John Fisher, venerated by Catholics and Anglicans.
Today's Saints
Some other saints On March 22 are Bishop Bienvenido of Ancona and the German Blessed Clement Augustus von Hallen, Bishop of Münster. St. Basil of Ancyra (Turkey), and Saints Leah, a Roman matron, and Epaphroditus, a disciple of St. Paul (Letter to the Philippians). The French St. Paul of Narbonne, and Blessed Mariano Gorecki and Bronislao Komorowski, Polish priests shot by the Nazis in the concentration camp of Stutthof, on Good Friday 1940.
