Luis Sotelo

Luis Sotelo ( born September 6, 1574 Seville, † August 25 1624 in Shimabara in Kyushu, Japan) was a Franciscan ( OFM).

He studied at the then famous University of Salamanca, before joining the Convention " Calvario de los Hermanos Menor ". He was sent in 1600 to the Philippines to meet the spiritual needs of the Japanese settlement of Dilao. This was destroyed in 1608 after hard fighting by Spanish forces.

Sotelo went to Japan, where he tried to build a church in the area of Tokyo. This church was also destroyed after the ban of Christianity in the area of the Tokugawa shogunate. Sotelo fled to northern Japan, in the of the Daimyo of Sendai, Date Masamune, controlled area where Christianity was tolerated.

Sotelo planned and supervised in 1614 a Japanese legation of Date Masamune to Spain. The delegation was led by Masamune's henchman Hasekura Tsunenaga. The captain of the vessel San Juan Bautista was Yokozawa Shogen. The legation was a product of the political ambitions of Sotelo and Date Masamune. Sotelo was trying to build, which should be independent of the controlled by the Jesuits diocese of Funai ( Nagasaki ) is a diocese in northern Japan. The Portuguese disabled his campaign and Sotelo not even received wide support from the Franciscans because the efforts were linked with personal aspirations to the Bishopric. Date Masamune, in turn, wanted trade relations with New Spain (Mexico), but soon it was clear that this trade was too expensive.

Sotelo accompanied the Japanese embassy to return to the Philippines, where he arrived in 1618 and remained for some time, since Christianity has been suppressed at this time in Japan through tough measures. He got into trouble with the church, as he had his achievements in Japan represented coated. The Catholic Council of the West Indies in 1620 sent him back to Mexico to pursue there his missionary activities.

1622 finally succeeded Sotelo to sneak aboard a Chinese junk in Japan, where, however, he was discovered and arrested. After two years of imprisonment, he was burned along with two other Franciscans, a Jesuit and a Dominican at the stake a few days before his 50th birthday. Because he died as a martyr, Pope Pius IX spoke to him. in 1867 saved.