Saint of the Day Online - St John Boste

Saint of the Day for Monday, July 24, 2017

Saint Name: Saint John Boste
Place: England
Birth: 1544
Death: 1594
Feast: July 24

Saint John Boste who was born in 1544 is a saint in the Roman Catholic Church, and one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

He was born at Dufton, at Westmoreland, England, and studied at Oxford. Becoming a Catholic in 1576, he went to Reims and received ordination in 1581. John went back to England where he worked in the northern parts of the kingdom and became the object of a massive manhunt. He was betrayed, arrested, and taken to London. There he was crippled on the rack and returned to Dryburn near Durham. On July 24, he was hanged, drawn, and quartered. John was canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as a martyr of Durham.

He converted to Catholicism in 1576. He left England and was ordained a priest at Reims in March 1581.

Boste returned to England in April 1581, landing in Hartlepool and made his way to East Anglia. Arriving in London, he posed as a servant a conforming Catholic household of Lord Montacute before returning north. He worked as a missionary priest in Northern England, often accompanied by John Speed. His activities were largely centered around Brancepeth Castle, owned by Lady Margaret Neville. An effective missionary, the authorities were eager to capture him. In January 1584 the Privy Council ordered Lord Scrope, Warden of the Western Marshes, to take energetic measures for his arrest. The house of Boste's brother Laurence was searched. Lord Huntingdon called Boste, "the great stage of the North".

Father Boste appears to have been in the vicinity of Carlisle in December and January, before going to Northumberland in early 1584. Boste evaded arrest for ten years but was betrayed to the authorities near Durham in 1593 by former Catholic Francis Egglesfield.

John Boste was beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929. He was canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.