Bl. John Thules and Roger Wrenno

John Thules, of Whalley, England, was ordained a priest in Rome around the age of twenty-four. Returning to England, he served his country’s persecuted Catholics for over twenty years. In Lancashire, he was arrested by the Protestant authorities and imprisoned with a Catholic weaver, Roger Wrenno. Father Thules converted four thieves imprisoned with them. The priest and Roger were sentenced to death for their faith. After Father Thules had been executed by drawing and quartering, Roger was placed in the noose to begin his execution, but the rope broke, sending him tumbling to the ground, still alive. The sheriff immediately offered him a second chance to escape death if he would agree to deny his faith. But instead, Roger, who had apparently experienced a supernatural vision, ran to the scaffold ladder and eagerly scaled it, telling the sheriff, “If you had seen that which I have just now seen, you would be as much in haste to die as I am now.” He was thereupon hung.