Our former bishop, Archbishop Joseph Hurley, was the great-great-[fill in greats as necessary....] nephew of Abp Dermott Hurley of Dublin, who was caught when he came back to Dublin from the college at Douai, France, held in prison and hideously tortured for many months, and then hanged outside the city gates of Dublin at the express orders of Elizabeth I. He is one of a group of 16 (?) Irish martyrs who have been beatified.
We used to have a mural depicting his torture, but it has since been removed. We have a shrine to St. Patrick, and tourists are always puzzled by the fact that many of our early priests in this Spanish-settled town were Irish, with Spanish first names. . This was because it was illegal for the Irish to study for the priesthood or even celebrate Mass in Ireland, and most of the Irish went to Spain to study. (The English went to France, generally.) After they were ordained, they could not return to Ireland for political reasons, so they were sent to the Spanish-speaking New World, since they had learned Spanish during their studies in Spain. Mexico had a number of Irish priests of this kind.
People always ask me about it, and at first I was a little uncomfortable explaining it to visitors if I suspected they might be Episcopalians. However, I finally just decided the only way to deal with it was simply to give a calm, factual explanation and let them figure out how they were going to process it. I would suspect that most of them are totally ignorant of this part of the history of the Anglican Church. Of course, as a consolation, I then remind them that once the Puritans took over, they persecuted both Anglicans and Catholics with equal zeal.
How interesting livius.
The look on his face was one of shock as he realized that not just Jews have been hunted and persecuted for their faith.