You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, Spouts.

Today is Tuesday, February 21st, 2003.

Today is also the feast day of an English saint, St. Robert Southwell. Now, St. Robert Southwell lived during a time of terrible persecution of the church

during the 1500s when the English had broken away from the church in Rome, founded their own church,

and were persecuting Catholics within the country. Robert Southwell, however, was a convert.

He went to France to be ordained a priest,

and he snuck back into England to serve the English Catholics. He did that work for a long time.

Eventually, he was arrested and he was tortured because the authorities wanted him to tell

where other Catholic priests were hiding in the country.

However, he refused to tell them about any of that.

Eventually, he was sentenced to death, and he was convicted for saying mass and distributing

the sacraments in England to the Catholics that lived there.

That was a crime

punishable by death at the time. However, he was very brave and very holy. And even as he

walked up to his execution and slowly died, he was a priest and he raised his hand in blessing,

even if the crowd there to watch him die, he blessed them as he was a priest, and he raised his hand in blessing, even if the crowd there to watch him die, he blessed them as he died.

So he is an incredible example of the great treasure that we have in our church.

And as we talk about Holy Mass this week, remember that Father Robert Southwell gave his life to make sure that Mass was accessible to the Catholics of England, that they could receive the Eucharist each Sunday, and they

risked their lives to do that every week. So hopefully that can motivate us to really cherish what we can

easily access every week in our own parishes. So this week, once again, we're talking about the

Mass, but before we get into that, let's practice memorizing the Anama Christi. In the name of the

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