ABOUT ST. THOMAS MORE
St. Thomas More is the patron saint of attorneys, statesmen and politicians.
More was an English lawyer who served as chancellor of England from 1529 to 1533. His martyrdom in 1535 at the behest of King Henry VIII came as a result of More’s refusal to support the king’s Act of Succession which sought to recognize the king as the head of a new Church of England, separate and apart from the Catholic Church.
More’s principled refusal to sign the act was extremely rare, as countless clergy and statesman throughout England signed the act in the name of political expediency. More was jailed, tried, and sentenced to death in 1535.
In 1935, Thomas More was canonized and proclaimed a saint of the universal Catholic Church by Pope Pius XI.
“When statesmen forsake their own private consciences for the sake of their public duties, they lead their country by a short route to chaos.”
-- St. Thomas More
“Blessed Thomas More is more important at this moment than at any moment since his death… but he is not quite as important as he will be in about a hundred years’ time.”
-- G.K. Chesterton,
A Turning Point in History, 1929
