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

Hey there, Sprouts. Today is Monday, June 22nd, 2020. It's also the feast of St. Thomas More.

Now, before we dive into today's content, let's talk about St. Thomas More. So St. Thomas lived in England during a very difficult time.

The king at the time was King Henry the 8th. And King Henry was a interesting guy. He desperately wanted

to have an heir, a male son that would be king after him. But he and his wife

didn't really have children very easily and the one child they could have was a girl. So because

of various reasons he wanted to divorce his wife and marry someone else. However, when he went to

the Pope to ask for this divorce, the Pope said no.

Now, King Henry did not like being told no. So because of this and a couple of other reasons,

he decided to break with the Roman Catholic Church, no longer follow the leadership of the Pope,

and instead do something radical

and create his own church, which we now know as the Church of England, and he would be the leader

of this church. Now, this is problematic for many, many reasons, and it led to all sorts of

horrible things in England. The monasteries where monks and

nuns lived were ransacked and the money was taken into the treasury of the king. Also, people were

forced to sign a document that said that the king was the head of the church and not the pope. And so it kind of spread,

led to a whole bunch of horrible things and the persecution of Catholics in England. One of those

people devoted to the Catholic teaching in every way was St. Thomas Moore. St. Thomas Moore was a

lawyer. He was a father, very well-respected man in

England. Unfortunately, he was also one of the closest friends of King Henry the 8th. They were close

friends. They actually shared their faith and their lives. When King Henry started making these

terrible decisions to break with Rome,

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