David Lewis (Jesuit)

David Lewis, alias Charles Baker ( * 1617 in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, † August 27 1679 in Usk ), was a Welsh Jesuit who was executed during the fictitious Popish plot in the Kingdom of England. He is one of the 1970 by Pope Paul VI. canonized Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

Life

David Lewis received his education at the Grammar School of Abergavenny, who led his father Morgan Lewis. His mother was Catholic, but David was raised Protestant. At age 16, during a stay in Paris, according to other data with 19 under the influence of an uncle, who was a Jesuit, he converted to the Catholic Church. From 1638 he studied at the English College in Rome. In 1642 he was ordained priest. 1644, he entered the novitiate of the Jesuits at Sant'Andrea al Quirinale. After a first great commission in England, he was Spiritual 1647 the English College in Rome, but returned in 1648 finally back to his homeland. In Monmouthshire, he worked for 28 years devoted to the pastoral care of the scattered Catholics, whom he had often secretly visit on nightly sojourns.

In the summer of 1678 Titus Oates broke with his invented Popish plot from a persecution of Catholics shaft. For the apprehension of priests, especially Jesuits, the Parliament set of rewards. Lewis was denounced by a false friend, was arrested in Llantarnam on 17 November 1678 brought in a kind of triumphal procession to Abergavenny. There he was made Bishop of Llandaff as prätendierter, the lead recatholicisation in shields on display. In Monmouth and Usk him the process was made. Although it could not be proven to cooperate in the Popish plot, but the mere fact that he had received the Roman ordinations abroad, was then returned to the Kingdom of England, where he had celebrated Mass, he was in application of a law from the time Elizabeth I counted as treason. He was taken to London and compared with Oates and his men. By apostasy, and the identification of co-conspirators, he could have saved his life, but he refused. He was then brought back to Usk and there hanged and quartered.

The canonization of David Lewis was initiated in 1886. On December 15, 1929 took Pius XI. the beatification. The canonization of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales by Paul VI. took place on 25 October 1970 at St. Peter's Basilica.