Friends in Heaven: Edmund Campion and the Martyrs of England & Wales
Sam Conedera, S.J.Saint Louis University
Free and open to the public. This event will be held online through Zoom (registration required) and live-streamed to YouTube. This event is co-presented with the Bollandist Society and America Media.
"The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God; it cannot be withstood." With these bold words Edmund Campion, SJ, communicated to Her Majesty's Privy Council in 1581 the Catholic plan to restore the faith in England. On December 1, the Church celebrates Campion and his fellow martyrs of England and Wales. They did not succeed in restoring the faith, but they did carry out one of the most dangerous and fascinating clandestine missions in the history of the Church. "Friends in Heaven" explores the origin, activities, and ultimate demise of these men, as well as the lay Catholics who aided them, in the Elizabethan age, and concludes with a brief discussion of how they came to be canonized.
Presented on the feast day of St. Edmund Campion, this event continues our event series on the saints, examining the lives of the martyrs of England and Wales.
Previous events in this series:
- "Venerating the Saints: An Ancient Tradition Actual Today" with Fr. John O'Malley, S.J.
Fr. Sam Conedera, S.J. is Assistant Professor of History at Saint Louis University. He holds a PhD in history from UCLA, an MA in philosophical resources from Fordham University, and a BA in sacred theology from Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He is the author of Alfonso Salmerón on the Scriptures (Forthcoming, Durham University Press) and Ecclesiastical Knights. The Military Orders in Castile, 1150-1330 (2015, Fordham University Press). Fr. Conedera is a Jesuit of the USA Western Province, ordained a priest in June 2017.
