By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY
As the threat from the coronavirus pandemic grows more serious, it is illuminating to look at the life of St Henry Morse, SJ (1595-1645), who worked during a time of pestilence with great courage and zeal. He labored as a priest in England at a time of both plague and persecution for Catholics in the first half of the seventeenth century.
He can teach us much about how to deal, in a spiritual sense, with the current situation, and is a wonderful example of Christian courage in the face of several outbreaks of the plague.
Henry Morse was raised in a Protestant family in the English County of Suffolk, but after the death of his father in 1614, he went to the English College at Douai in France where he became a Catholic. From there he was sent to the English College in Rome where he was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1624. He was sent back to the northeast of England, to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and when there was an outbreak of the plague there later, along with his fellow Jesuits, he ministered to the sick.
He was arrested and imprisoned, and finally banished from the country, only returning in 1633, when he began to work in the St. Giles-in-the Fields area of London, a locality which had a sizable Catholic population. Social conditions were very poor, the air was foul with smoke, the streets narrow and the tenements of the poor crowded and filthy, with little or nothing in the way of garbage collection.
Two years later, the city itself was struck with the plague, and as the warm weather came, the cases of those thus afflicted grew, and the whole of London became fearful to the point of panic.
Fr. Morse was one of two priests assigned to the work of looking after the beleaguered local Catholics, and apart from his sacramental ministry, which included exhorting sufferers to confess their sins before they died, he was also responsible for bringing medicines to the sick and laying out the corpses of the dead for burial. He also had to raise money for those who had lost their livelihood because of plague conditions.
A fellow priest described his work as follows: “Day and night he worked and although he gave his principal attention to Catholics, he did not neglect others. It is hardly credible what hard work and horrors he endured. All the time he was in close contact with the panic-stricken, entering rooms that were oppressive with foul and pestilential air, sitting down beside a bed in the midst of squalor of the most repulsive and contagious nature.”
It was believed that the plague was transmitted through the air and hence at sick houses windows were fastened shut — and so the atmosphere in such places was particularly fetid. The situation grew worse later in the year when London was effectively sealed by the authorities, thus preventing anyone from escaping to the countryside.
What made matters worse for ordinary Catholics was the fact that Puritan preachers blamed the plague on the “papist idolatry” of Catholicism — and unfortunately, many of the more simple-minded inhabitants of London believed them. Despite this agitation, Fr. Morse visited both Catholics and Protestants and his solicitude for all led to numerous conversions.
He fell ill to the plague himself in March 1636, and although he continued to work by day, he temporarily suspended his customary night calls until he had recovered his strength somewhat. But later in the year, he again fell ill, and this time much more seriously. He was ordered by his superior to give up working with those stricken by the plague, who told him that his fellow Jesuits were all praying for his recovery.
No sooner had Fr. Morse finished reading the letter giving him this information, though, when he immediately felt better, in what seems to have been a miraculous cure, and so was able to resume his ministry.
There were numerous Catholic doctors at work amongst the plague victims, since medicine was the only profession believers were allowed to practice in the prevailing anti-Catholic atmosphere. One Dr. Thomas Turner was Fr. Morse’s personal physician, and he worked with another Catholic, Dr. More, in attending the plague-stricken and assisting the Jesuit. But even so, there were so many afflicted Catholics that Fr. Morse was also forced to act as a nurse, often dressing the sores of sufferers, a most repulsive task.
In early 1637, he was arrested and imprisoned in the notorious Newgate prison, and spent Lent of that year in prayer and fasting. And despite the fact that his health was steadily growing worse, he covertly exercised his priestly ministry among his fellow prisoners. He was released on bail in June of that year but was arrested again, before going into exile in Spain as chaplain to an English regiment.
Convicted
He returned in 1643, working in the northeast of England, but was again arrested in late 1644 and sent to London, where he found himself back in Newgate. He was eventually convicted, as a priest, of treason, and sentenced to death, by being hanged, drawn, and quartered.
In the few days between this sentence being passed and his execution, Fr. Morse was visited by many people, including foreign ambassadors, seeking his prayers and blessing. He was able to say Mass early on the morning of his execution, and at 9:00 a.m. was led out to take the road to Tyburn.
He was dragged on a horse-drawn hurdle along the muddy streets to the place of execution, and once there, was helped up the ladder to the gallows and the rope placed around his neck. Four criminals were to be executed with him and while their ropes were being arranged, he was able to speak to the large crowd which had gathered.
He told them that he had come there to die for his religion, the religion founded by Christ, outside of which there is no salvation. Then he said, “Gentlemen, take notice, the kingdom of England will never be truly blessed until it returns to the Catholic and apostolic faith, and its subjects are all united in one belief and live in obedience to one head, the Bishop of Rome.”
After time for quiet prayer, he commended his soul into the hands of God, and then struck his breast three times, an acknowledged sign for any priest in the crowd to give him absolution. He was left to hang until he was dead, as had become the custom, but his body was still quartered and the head set on London Bridge with the four parts set on the city gates.
He was canonized by Pope Paul VI as one of the forty martyrs of England and Wales in 1970, and his example, under the most trying, indeed terrifying and contagious conditions imaginable — when large numbers of people were infected, and indeed thousands died — of selflessly carrying on his priestly ministry, at grave personal risk to himself, is inspirational.
We should also pay tribute to the dedicated doctors and others who helped him in his work, and remember how doctors, nurses, and health workers today, and priests, are also being called to work in potentially very dangerous situations due to the coronavirus. They, and we, all need prayers at this time, and St. Henry Morse is a very worthy patron to address such prayers to.
For all of us, his manner of living and dying — a true living martyrdom crowned by a martyr’s death — are proof that Christ is always with His Church, and always will be, no matter how serious a situation we may find ourselves in.
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(Donal Anthony Foley is the author of a number of books on Marian Apparitions, and maintains a related website at www.theotokos.org.uk. He has also written two time-travel/adventure books for young people, and the third in the series is due to be published next year — details can be seen at: http://glaston-chronicles.co.uk.)
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