Blessed Luis Sotelo

Luis Sotelo, OFM, in English known also as Louis Sotelo, (September 6, 1574 – August 25, 1624) was a Franciscan friar from Spain who died as a martyr in Japan, in 1624, and was beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1867. Luis was born to a noble family in Sevilla, Spain, and studied at the University of Salamanca before entering the convent of "Calvario de los Hermanos Menores". He became a Franciscan Friar and was ordained a priest. In 1600 he was sent to the Philippines to prepare for missionary work. There he was assigned to serve the spiritual needs of the Japanese settlement of Dilao, which was destroyed by Spanish forces, in 1608, after intense fighting. In 1608, Pope Paul V authorized Dominicans and Franciscans to evangelize in Japan, heretofore the preserve of the Jesuits. Sotelo spent four years in Manila, learning the Japanese language before going to Japan and taking a leading role there. Sotelo tried to establish a Franciscan church in the area of Edo (present-day Tokyo). The church was destroyed in 1612, following the interdiction of Christianity in the territories of the Tokugawa shogunate on April 21, 1612. After a period of intense missionary activity by the Catholic Church, Tokugawa Hidetada, the second shōgun of the Tokugawa dynasty, issued a decree which banned the practice and teaching of the Christian faith, and under the threat of loss of life, all the missionaries had to leave Japan. This decree started the bloody persecution of Christians, which lasted several decades. After the healing in Edo of a concubine of the powerful daimyō of Sendai, Date Masamune, Sotelo was invited to the northern part of Japan, in the area controlled by Date, under whom Christianity was still allowed. He came back to Tokyo the following year and constructed and inaugurated a new church on May 12, 1613, in the area of Asakusa Torigoe. The Bakufu reacted by arresting the Christians, and Sotelo himself was put in the Kodenma-chō (小伝馬町) prison.