Was the last 'witch' of Boston actually an Irish Catholic martyr?

Boston, Mass., Oct 31, 2014 (CNA/EWTN News). 

The last person hanged for witchcraft in Boston could be considered a Catholic martyr.

In the 1650s, Ann Glover and her family, along with some 50,000 other native Irish people, were enslaved by Englishman Oliver Cromwell during the occupation of Ireland and shipped to the island of Barbados, where they were sold as indentured servants.

What is known of her history is sporadic at best, though she was definitely Irish and definitely Catholic. According to an article in the Boston Globe, even Ann's real name remains a mystery, as indentured servants were often forced to take the names of their masters.

While in Barbados, Ann's husband was reportedly killed for refusing to renounce his Catholic faith. By 1680, Ann and her daughter had moved to Boston where Ann worked as a “goodwife” (a housekeeper and nanny) for the John Goodwin family.

Father Robert O'Grady, director of the Boston Catholic Directory for the Archdiocese of Boston, said that after working for the Goodwins for a few years, Ann Glover became sick, and the illness spread to four of the five Goodwin children.

“She was, unsurprisingly, not well-educated, and in working with the family, apparently she got sick at some point and the kids for whom she was primarily responsible caught whatever it was,” Fr. O'Grady told CNA.

A doctor allegedly concluded that “nothing but a hellish Witchcraft could be the origin of these maladies,” and one of the daughters confirmed the claim, saying she fell ill after an argument with Ann.  

The infamous Reverend Cotton Mather, a Harvard graduate and one of the main perpetrators of witch trial hysteria at the time, insisted Ann Glover was a witch and brought her to what would be the last witch trial in Boston in 1688.

In the courtroom, Ann refused to speak English and instead answered questions in her native Irish Gaelic. In order to prove she was not a witch, Mather asked Ann to recite the Our Father, which she did, in a mix of Irish Gaelic and Latin because of her lack of education.

“Cotton Mather would have recognized some of it, because of course that would have been part of your studies in those days, you studied classical languages when you were preparing to be a minister, especially Latin and Greek,” Father O'Grady said.

“But because it was kind of mixed in with Irish Gaelic, it was then considered proof that she was possessed because she was mangling the Latin.”

Allegedly, Boston merchant Robert Calef, who knew Ann when she was alive, said she “was a despised, crazy, poor old woman, an Irish Catholic who was tried for afflicting the Goodwin children. Her behavior at her trial was like that of one distracted. They did her cruel. The proof against her was wholly deficient. The jury brought her guilty. She was hung. She died a Catholic."

Mather convicted Ann of being an “idolatrous Roman Catholick” and a witch, and she hung on Boston Common on November 16, 1688. Today, just a 15 minute walk away, the parish of Our Lady of Victories holds a plaque commemorating her martyrdom, which reads:

“Not far from here on 16 November 1688, Goodwife Ann Glover an elderly Irish widow, was hanged as a witch because she had refused to renounce her Catholic faith. Having been deported from her native Ireland to the Barbados with her husband, who died there because of his own loyalty to the Catholic faith, she came to Boston where she was living for at least six years before she was unjustly condemned to death. This memorial is erected to commemorate “Goody” Glover as the first Catholic martyr in Massachusetts.”

The plaque was placed at the Church on the tercentennial anniversary of her death in 1988 by the Order of Alhambra, a Catholic fraternity whose mission includes commemorating Catholic historical persons, places and events. The Boston City Council also declared November 16 as “Goody Glover Day”, in order to condemn the injustice brought against her.  

Ann Glover has not yet been officially declared a martyr by a pope, nor has her cause for canonization been opened to date, partly because her story has faded into obscurity over time, Fr. O’Grady said.

“Part of the dilemma here (too) is that when she was hanged, Catholics were a tiny, minuscule, minority in Boston, so picking up her ‘cause’ was not easy or ‘on top of the list,’” he said.

Ann Glover's trial also set the tone for the infamous Salem Witch Trials in 1692, during which 19 men and women were hanged for witchcraft, and in which Reverend Cotton Mather and his anti-Catholic prejudices played a major role.

St. Paul Miki and the Rise of Japan’s Hidden Christians

From http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/st-paul-miki-and-the-rise-of-japans-hidden-christians

On February 5, 1597, by order of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the regent and de facto military ruler of Japan, 26 Christians were crucified in the port town of Nagasaki. Six Franciscan missionaries (from Spain, Mexico, and India), three Japanese Jesuits, and seventeen Japanese laymen comprised the group, known as the First Martyrs of Japan and commemorated liturgically as St. Paul Miki and companions.

What historians have called the “Christian century” in Japan began with the arrival of St. Francis Xavier’s Jesuit missionary expedition in 1549. By the time Xavier left Japan in 1552, he had made perhaps three thousand Japanese converts. The Jesuits found the greatest success in those parts of Japan where they converted the feudal lord (daimyo). By 1582, there were about 150,000 Japanese Catholics. The Jesuits, whose material support came from the Portuguese trading presence in Japan, would be joined in 1593 by Franciscans from Spain. The Franciscan effort focused less on Japan’s feudal elites and more on the poor and the sick. Although lamentable rivalries between the two orders sometimes hindered missionaries’ success, the number of Japanese Christians grew to about 300,000 in 1614 (out of a population of 15 to 20 million).

Meanwhile, trouble was brewing, because Christianity had come to a Japan that was in the midst of political and military turmoil. The most powerful daimyo were in the process of creating a new centralized dictatorship amid the decline and fall of the Ashikaga shogunate. Disunity meant vulnerability to western imperialism, and the warlords who reunified Japan can hardly be blamed for seeing the missionaries as agents of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns. Despite missionaries’ assertions of independence from foreign politics and commerce, a backlash began in 1587. Regent Hideyoshi issued a sweeping anti-Christian edict that year, ordering all missionaries to leave the islands on pain of death, all missionary property to be confiscated, and all Japanese converts to recant. Oddly enough, these edicts went almost completely unenforced, but Christians were on warning. A decade later, a heavy-laden galleon, guided by a loud-mouthed pilot, ran aground on a Japanese island. The pilot’s bravado sparked rumors of a planned Spanish invasion involving missionary collusion, and Hideyoshi responded by ordering the 1597 crucifixions. The regent strategically chose to make an example at Nagasaki, one of the great centers of Japanese Catholicism.

Among those 26 First Martyrs was a promising Jesuit seminarian named Paulo Miki, who would have become the first native-born Japanese priest. Miki’s vocation was the fruit of a Christian upbringing and the long-term Jesuit efforts to raise up a Japanese priesthood. (As it turned out, the first native Japanese priests would not be ordained until 1601.) From his cross, Miki preached a “sermon” that ended in these words:

As I come to this supreme moment of my life, I am sure none of you would suppose I want to deceive you. And so I tell you plainly: there is no way to be saved except the Christian way. My religion teaches me to pardon my enemies and all who have offended me. I do gladly pardon the Emperor and all who have sought my death. I beg them to seek baptism and be Christians themselves.

The Japanese soldiers dispatched each martyr with a spear thrust and left the bodies hanging for nine months.

Nevertheless, this was not to be the end of the missions. Hideyoshi died the next year, and the Church in Japan grew at an astounding rate, sometimes reaching 25,000 baptisms in a year. Tokugawa Ieyasu, the new military dictator who founded the long-lived Tokugawa shogunate (1600-1868) permitted this growth for much of his reign, even though he issued low-level anti-Christian edicts starting in 1601.

The great persecution of Japanese Catholics came with Ieyasu’s 1614 anti-Christian edict, which gave the following justification for banning Christianity:

The Christian band have come to Japan not only sending their merchant vessels to exchange commodities, but also long to disseminate an evil law, to overthrow right doctrine, so they may change the government of the country, and obtain possession of the land. Japan is the country of the gods and Buddha…. The principles of benevolence and right doing are held to be of prime importance….  Quickly cast out the evil law and spread our true Law more and more.

Historian Samuel Hugh Moffett, among others, has noted the deliberate opposition here between Christianity and the three great religions of Japan: “Buddhism, Shinto (‘the gods’), and Confucianism (‘benevolence and right doing’).” Another scholar, Neil S. Fujita, has suggested that these three comprised a strong native religion of “Japanism,” which Christianity could not either accommodate or ultimately supplant. The missionaries themselves saw Buddhist monks as chief among their detractors, and advisors to the shoguns busily promoted the stabilizing influence of Confucianism. In any event, the next few decades of persecution were devastating, and the Christian flock was cut in half by a combination of apostasy and martyrdom.

Out of this tragic end to Japan’s Christian century, there arose the remarkable phenomenon of clandestine Catholic communities. For over two hundred years, the “hidden Christians” (Kakure Kirishitan) survived underground, without priests and without contact with the wider Church. During the time of the missions, a perpetual shortage of priests led missionaries to train a lay Japanese leadership for service as preachers, catechists, visitors of the poor and sick, and even occasional ministers of baptism. Thus, as Japanese Catholics lost their priests in the persecution, they fell back on that well-developed lay leadership.

The structure and degree of catechesis in these communities varied a great deal by locality, but most remained faithful to a core set of beliefs and practices, especially baptism. They prayed the Our Father in Japanese and the Hail Mary in broken Latin. To avoid detection, they used devotional objects—such as statues of Madonna and child—that could be easily taken for Buddhist ones.

In 1865, after Japan had reopened itself to western influence, a newly arrived French priest named Fr. Bernard-Thadée Petitjean was overjoyed to find a large Christian community in Nagasaki. Japanese law only allowed him to minister to foreigners, but the hidden Christians came to him secretly, saying, “The heart of all of us here is the same as yours.” Through the centuries, they had handed down criteria for recognizing the Church when it reappeared: the priests would be celibate, and they would obey “the great chief of the Kingdom of Rome.” Despite the non-Christian elements that had slipped into hidden Christian practice and belief in some areas, the reuniting Christians had preserved much of the faith intact, from the celebration of Christian feast days (especially Christmas, the Lenten season, and Easter) to the rudiments of Trinitarian theology. Two to three thousand Christians from the Nagasaki area soon officially reunited themselves to the Catholic Church, and their numbers would swell as hidden Christians around the islands revealed themselves.

As we celebrate the heroic example of the Japanese martyrs and of the hidden Christians, we can also take Japan’s Catholic history as a cautionary tale. We are sometimes tempted to quote Tertullian (“the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”) and thus dismiss the terrible effects of anti-Christian state action. The great Japanese persecutions halved the body of the faithful. When the hidden Christians were rediscovered in the nineteenth century, about half of them chose not to reunite with the Catholic Church. This was not the first time that persecution had led to large-scale apostasy and schism. The last major Roman persecution, under Emperor Diocletian in the early fourth century, showed that many Christians were too weak to face death, even for Christ. After Christians received official toleration, the Donatists went into schism over questions of how to treat repentant apostates. When King Henry VIII began his sixteenth-century schism in England, only one bishop, St. John Fisher, remained steadfast against him. In short, the persecution of Christians works, and we cannot presume that we ourselves would go joyfully to our deaths. Nor ought we let ourselves become complacent about the plight of suffering Christians worldwide in our own day. For, as beautiful as is the story of the hidden Christians, what might have been the history of a Japan wherein these Catholics never had to hide? All that said, let us pray today that the blood of the First Japanese Martyrs may be the seed of a vigorous, growing Church in Japan!

St. John Roberts: Priest and Martyr

From the Catholic Encyclopedia on www.newadvent.org

First Prior of St. Gregory's, Douai (now Downside Abbey), b. 1575-6; martyred 10 December, 1610. He was the son of John and Anna Roberts of Trawsfynydd, Merionethshire, N. Wales. He matriculated at St. John's College, Oxford, in February, 1595-6, but left after two years without taking a degree and entered as a law student at one of the Inns of Court. In 1598 he travelled on the continent and in Paris, through the influence of a Catholic fellow- countryman, was converted. By the advice of John Cecil, an English priest who afterwards became a Government spy, he decided to enter the English College at Valladolid, where he was admitted 18 October, 1598. The following year, however, he left the college for the Abbey of St. Benedict, Valladolid; whence, after some months, he was sent to make his novitiate in the great Abbey of St. Martin at Compostella where he made his profession towards the end of 1600. His studies completed he was ordained, and set out for England 26 December, 1602. Although observed by a Government spy, Roberts and his companions succeeded in entering the country in April, 1603; but, his arrival being known, he was arrested and banished on 13 May following. He reached Douai on 24 May and soon managed to return to England where he laboured zealously among the plague-stricken people in London. In 1604, while embarking for Spain with four postulants, he was again arrested, but not being recognized as a priest was soon released and banished, but returned again at once. On 5 November, 1605, while Justice Grange was searching the house of Mrs. Percy, first wife of Thomas Percy, who was involved in the Gunpowder Plot, he found Roberts there and arrested him. Though acquitted of any complicity in the plot itself, Roberts was imprisoned in the Gatehouse at Westminster for seven months and then exiled anew in July, 1606.
This time he was absent for some fourteen months, nearly all of which he spent at Douai where he founded a house for the English Benedictine monks who had entered various Spanish monasteries. This was the beginning of the monastery of St. Gregory at Douai which still exists as Downside Abbey, near Bath, England. In October, 1607, Roberts returned to England, was again arrested in December and placed in the Gatehouse, from which he contrived to escape after some months. He now lived for about a year in London and was again taken some time before May, 1609, in which month he was taken to Newgate and would have been executed but for the intercession of de la Broderie, the French ambassador, whose petition reduced the sentence to banishment. Roberts again visited Spain and Douai, but returned to England within a year, knowing that his death was certain if he were again captured. This event took place on 2 December, 1610; the pursuivants arriving just as he was concluding Mass, took him to Newgate in his vestments. On 5 December he was tried and found guilty under the Act forbidding priests to minister in England, and on 10 December was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. The body of Roberts was recovered and taken to St. Gregory's, Douai, but disappeared during the French Revolution. Two fingers are still preserved at Downside and Erdington Abbeys respectively and a few minor relics exist. At Erdington also is a unique contemporary engraving of the martyrdom which has been reproduced in the "Downside Review" (XXIV, 286). The introduction of the cause of beatification was approved by Leo XIII in his Decree of 4 December, 1886.

[Note: In 1970, John Roberts was canonized by Pope Paul VI as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, whose joint feastday is kept on 25 October.]

Paul Comtois: A Modern Day Politican who became a Martyr of the Eucharist

From http://catholicism.org/paul-comtois.html

"A Modern Catholic Hero: Paul Comtois
Posted By The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary On October 14, 2008 Compiled from Various Sources
Early in the morning of Monday, February 21st, 1966, with the outside temperature about 20 degrees below zero, the historic old mansion that served as Government House in Sillery, Quebec, Canada, caught fire and, as the Fire Chief on the scene later described, “… went up like matchwood.” Initial reports told of a man seen shepherding his wife, daughter, staff and guests from the house. Then that same man deliberately walked back into the blazing inferno that had been known as Bois de Coulonges Manor, official residence of the Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of Quebec. He never walked out.
Who was that man? What could have been his reason for putting his life in such great danger?
The answer is simply this: Someone he loved more than life itself was still in the house!
Three days after the fire, a French priest in Quebec, Father J.M. Laplante, O.M.I., wrote an explanatory article for the Wanderer, which appeared in its issue dated March 10, 1966. We quote from his article:
No Greater Love
Wanderer readers may have heard that Lieutenant-Governor Paul Comtois, personal representative of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth of England, perished on Monday morning, February 21st, in the fire that de­stroyed the 105 year-old Bois de Coulonges Manor, at Sillery, Quebec.
For your American readers, permit me to explain the role of a governor or viceroy in the Canadian political system. As we all know, the Queen of the United Kingdom reigns, but does not govern. She is, rather, a figurehead, a moral authority. In Canada we still have the British system, and the Queen is officially represented in Ottawa by a Governor General, and, in each Province of the Confederation, by a Lieutenant-Governor. So, in the Province of Quebec, His Excellency Paul Comtois was holding that high office.
Mr. Comtois had been elected a Member of Parliament in Ottawa for Nicolet County in the fifties, and when the Conservative Party won the election in 1954, under the leadership of Honorable John Diefenbaker, he was chosen as a Cabinet Minister. Finally, he was selected to succeed Mr. Onesime Gagnon, as Lieutenant-Governor, when the latter died.
Paul Comtois was known to be a most personable man, a popular socialite, with an exquisite French courtesy, and most of all, a true Catholic, a faithful servant of the Church.
On the early morning of February 21st last, when the fire began in the Bois de Coulonge Manor, Mrs. Comtois was in bed. There were visitors in the castle, ten occupants in all. Mr. Comtois, 70 years old, was the first to act. He took his wife in his arms and brought her outside. His daughter, Mireile, and all the other occupants were shepherded out by His Excellency himself. Then, as his daughter wanted to return to the house, he gave her explicit orders to STAY OUT. He himself went upstairs to his private chapel to rescue the Holy Species.
Unfortunately, whether he could not open the tabernacle because of the progress of the fire, or whether the smoke was too heavy, at any rate he was able to get hold of the paten and relic only. Then, as he came down, the stairs collapsed and he was burned alive in the holocaust. It was a sublime act of faith, a beautiful response to the recent encyclical, Mysterium Fidei, that a man laid down his life as a strong believer in the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist, a martyr of Jesus in the Host.
The news was first released that Monday morning by CTC, a National network. But afterwards, there was no mention of that incident. I wondered how the world conspirators, the modernist dictatorship, the Left-wing Catholics, who control vast segments of our news media, would handle the case. I did not have long to wait.
Last night, February 23rd, the CBF (French channel) timidly an­nounced the truth, but warned that there was no question of dramatizing the already tragic death of Mr. Comtois. Because, as you know, the Left-wing elements - Catholic or otherwise - get along so well together -are against triumphalism, and maximalism in the display of our faith. The Church must confess its sins, deplore its bad and outmoded traditions, but never lapse into exaltation of its truths, or the holiness of its members.
So it is! The Left-wing press: LeDevoir, La Presse, of Montreal, Le Soleil of Quebec City, played down the wonderful deed. There was and is no editorial dedicated to it. It would be too Catholic, and Paul Comtois was a conservative Catholic at that.
In other times, that news would have covered the world with headlines. But nowadays? I doubt if La Croix and Les Informations Catholiques Internationales of Paris, or the U.S.A. Liberal Catholic week­lies will give much coverage or comment to that sublime act of faith.
But what an act of reparation, nonetheless, for the Left-wing priests who do not believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, or who throw away the consecrated hosts after the celebration of the Mass is over! The fact that, in 1966, a politician, a statesman, the Anglican Queen’s immediate representative in Quebec, imitated the gesture of St. Tarcisius should be shouted from the rooftops. Seldom before did we realize that conservative Catholics such as these are the true Church, that their belief is ABSOLUTE, that the privilege of having Christ as guest in the house implies the duty of attempting to SAVE HIM in His sacrament, even at the loss of His host’s life. Yes. His Excellency Paul Comtois, host of Christ in Bois de Coulonges Manor, gave up his life for the sake of Christ the Host! May his merits earn for the Province of Quebec the grace to believe in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist and in the tabernacle till the end of time!
But the Wanderer although read and much trusted in ROME has a relatively small circulation and the affirmation of Paul Comtois was not - in Father Laplante’s words - “shouted from the rooftops”. His imitation “of the gesture of St. Tarcisius” had been virtually suppressed, much to the relief of the Left­wing Establishment in the Catholic and secular world. After all, hadn’t they warned us “there was no question of dramatizing the already tragic death of Mr. Comtois.”
And they were true to their word. Except for a single reference to the incident, five years later, in the Church bulletin of the Canadian Armed Forces base in Cold Lake, Alberta, dated February 14th, 1971, it became a dead story. But then, quite suddenly, it came to life again.
In 1973, a gentleman by the name of Larry Henderson became Editor of The Catholic Register, the largest of all English language Catholic newspapers in the bilingual country of Canada. In the issue dated February 23, 1974, Mr. Henderson wrote this piece:
The Death of Paul Comtois
It is a truly extraordinary thing that I am going to tell you - but the most extraordinary thing about it is that you have probably never heard of it before. It concerns the holy death of a Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec, Paul Comtois.
The facts are quite straightforward. Just eight years ago, on Feb. 21st, 1966, fire destroyed the Lieutenant-Governor’s mansion at Silery, Que­bec. Mr. Comtois, 70 years old, was the first to notice smoke. There were ten occupants of the chateau including his wife and daughter. The Lieutenant-Governor brought them all outside to safety. Then he returned himself inside the blazing building to rescue the Blessed Sacrament in his private chapel.
Apparently, he was unable to open the tabernacle door. At any rate, he succeeded in getting hold of the paten and relic only. Then, as he came down, the stairs collapsed and he was burned alive in the holocaust. Such are the facts.
What is not so clear is why this extraordinary action went unreported at the time and has since remained virtually unknown. After checking the story out, I came to the conclusion that this act, which would have become a part of the history of mankind in any other time, has been deliberately overlooked today.
Of course, to the agnostic world, such an act is incomprehensible. Yet even so, the sheer sensationalism of it would seem to have warranted front page play in the secular press. It did not. Le Devoir and La Presse passed it over in silence. Furthermore, the Catholic press was not informed. What are we to conclude? Perhaps someone can enlighten me.
Mr. Henderson promptly ordered a full report. It was prepared by a very experienced Quebec newspaperman Myles O’Farrell and appeared in the Catholic Register March 2nd, 1974. In Mr. O’Farrell’s fuller investigation, it will be noticed that Paul Comtois had actually reached the pyx, which was found safely under his body. Yet Lt. Col. J.P. Martin, chief aide-de-camp, had reported, “The fire started as though it were in a matchbox. It was incredible to see with what speed the flames spread through the building.” The heat of the crackling flames was in acid contrast to the 20-degree-below-zero temperature in Quebec City. Despite the wintry weather, the firemen could not approach closer than 100 feet, and hoses were continually freezing. But Paul Comtois could - and did. Mr. O’Farrell’s full report in the Catholic Register, March 2nd, 1974 read:
How Comtois Died with Host In His Hands
Quebec City - There is little doubt left today that eight years ago - on February 21st, 1966 - Paul Comtois, 70, Quebec’s 21st Lieutenant­-Governor, burned to death while trying to save the Holy Eucharist from the fire that destroyed the governor’s Bois de Coulonges residence at Sillery, Quebec.
Maurice Cardinal Roy, Primate of Canada and Archbishop of Quebec, said at the time: “Mr. Comtois, as a Christian, gave an example of wisdom and goodness, humility, and radiant faith.”
Still, Paul Comtois’s heroic sacrifice remains officially unrecognized and was very lightly passed over by the secular press.
However, it is now firmly established from eye-witness testimony, that, instead of escaping himself as he could have, Paul Comtois, like the captain of a sinking ship, refused to leave the burning building until all his guests, staff and family members had reached safety.
Then in a desperate attempt to fulfill his last obligation in saving the Holy Eucharist in the family chapel from the flames, he himself perished. The pyx, the sacred vessel in which the Host is kept after consecration, was found under his charred body as proof of his near-success.
His daughter, Mireille, told how: “As I was racing through the building to escape from the fire, I came upon my father in the chapel. As I was going to run to him, he firmly ordered me to jump from a nearby window and I did, wondering why he did not do likewise. The last I saw of him, he was standing under the sanctuary lamp in his pajamas and wearing around his neck the souvenir Rosary from his father which he said every night and wore to sleep.” “My father,” Mireille continued, “would visit the chapel each night before retiring to say his prayers.” His mother was a McCaffrey, right from Ireland, and even though he was a devout man, he held a certain disdain for death.
“My father once told me that he had difficulty in being granted the special permission from the Cardinal to permanently keep the Blessed Sacrament in the private chapel. When he finally was given this permission, it was on condition that he be personally responsible for its safe and proper keeping. And my father was a man who lived up to his obligations at all costs.”
“I was told,” she continued, ‘that when they found him, his body was badly burned and his arms were no longer intact; but my father was a big stocky man and under the upper part of his body they found the pyx used to carry the Holy Eucharist. His body had saved it from the flames . . . I can still picture him standing there in the light of the sanctuary lamp.”
Brian Turpin, a Quebec City fireman among the first to locate Mr. Comtois’s body, said: “We found him face down, his body badly burned amongst the sacred vestments scattered on the chapel floor. The small case for the Host was at his front. His arms had been burned off and were separated from his body on the floor.”
Mac Stearns, a Quebec industrialist and overnight guest of the Gov­ernor’s residence, commented: “I jumped to safety from a second story balcony, injuring my back in doing so and was hospitalized for some time after. My wife and I were good friends of the Comtois family. We were in the habit of visiting one another. I grew to be a close friend and admirer of Paul Comtois. He was a very sincere person, deeply concerned with the problems of humanity.”
“His tremendous religious faith impressed me greatly and was no doubt instrumental in my embracing the Catholic faith some time after his death. Knowing his great fervor for the Blessed Sacrament,” Mr. Stearns added, “I have no doubt whatsoever that Paul would do all in his power to rescue the Holy Eucharist from the fire.”
Paul Comtois was born in Pierreville, Quebec, on the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, August 22nd, 1895. He first entered politics in 1930 and was defeated by one vote. In June, 1957, he entered the House of Commons as member for Nicolet-Yamaska. On Oct. 1st, 1961, he was appointed Quebec Lieutenant-Governor by John Diefenbaker, then Prime Minister.
This beautiful story of the noble death of Paul Comtois was published in booklet form in 1988 by a dear friend, Mr. John Cotter of Barrie, Ontario, Canada. The booklet bore the title The Affirmation of Paul Comtois, and had an introduction written by another dear friend, Sister Maureen Peckham, R.S.C.J. With the permission of Mr. Cotter, we have presented the story in substantially the same manner as did he. With the permission of Sister Maureen, we will close this story of a true Catholic hero of our time with, but for one slight change, the exact words she wrote as an introduction:
Epilogue
Over twenty years have passed since, in an act of gallant generosity, a supernaturally splendid ‘beau geste’, Paul Comtois, Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of Quebec, laid down his life for his Friend in the Blessed Sacrament. His story, far from making the headlines, was considered, by the secular press, not newsworthy, and, by the Catholic press, an embarrassment. The Church of the second half of the 20th century is, to its shame, not noted for its faith in the Blessed Sacrament, and, one can only deduce that it was fear of being considered foolish and old-womanish - or, worse still, old hat - by an unbelieving world that caused the leaders of the Church in Quebec to pass over, in blushing silence, Mr. Comtois’ noble deed.
Yet, Paul Comtois was a man of the world, a well-known socialite, one who had reached the heights of worldly glory; he was one whom the world could recognize as its own. Furthermore, his chivalrous and brave death should, even on the human and worldly level, have merited him the title of hero. That he, who had been honored by the world during his lifetime, should have been ignored by the world at the moment of his death, can only be explained by the fact that he died for One Whom the world does not recognize and has ever refused to acknowledge.
The glorious martyrdom of Paul Comtois, passed over as it was by an unbelieving world, and by an all too unbelieving Church, has, nonetheless, remained in the faithful memory of God’s true friends. That one of these should today be putting into print Mr. Comtois’ shining witness of charity, in its radical and essential loveliness, is indeed a welcome and joyous event. May this inspiring story enflame the hearts of all who read it with an undying love for the Lord of the Tabernacle."