Blessed Thomas Pickering
Feast Day: May 9
This English Benedictine lay brother was a martyr of the Popish Plot. He professed vows in France in 1660 and was sent to London in 1665 as procurator of a small community celebrating liturgies in the chapel of Queen Catherine of Braganza. Though other monks were banished, he was allowed to stay. Because of the fictitious plot, in which Titus Oates alleged that King Charles II would be assassinated and the French king would re-establish Catholicism in England, three Jesuits, Pickering and a layman were found guilty of conspiracy.
