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Biography

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John Almond was an English Roman Catholic priest and martyr of the early seventeenth century, later numbered among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. He was born about 1577 at Allerton, near Liverpool, in Lancashire. Little is recorded of his family. He received his early schooling at Much Woolton and, while still young, left England, going first to Ireland and then to the Continent in order to study for the priesthood at a time when Catholic seminary training was forbidden at home. He studied at the English College at Rheims and entered the English College in Rome in 1597. There he completed his formation and was ordained priest in 1598.

After further time in Rome he was sent on the English mission and returned to his native country in 1602. For about a decade he worked as a missionary priest among recusant Catholics, administering the sacraments in secret under the penal laws of the later Elizabethan and early Jacobean period. He gained a reputation for learning and for skill in religious controversy. He was arrested in 1608 and subsequently released, then continued his ministry until he was taken into custody again in 1612.

Committed to Newgate Prison in London, Almond was tried at the Old Bailey under the statute of 27 Elizabeth that made it high treason for a priest ordained abroad to enter or remain in England. He refused the Oath of Allegiance in the form demanded by the government. Contemporary accounts present him as answering his judges with composure and as using his learning in defence of the Catholic faith. He was condemned to death.

On 5 December 1612 he was executed at Tyburn by hanging, drawing, and quartering. Reports of the execution describe him as meeting death with cheerfulness and charity. He was about thirty-five years of age. In keeping with the practice of the time, his remains were subjected to the usual indignities after such an execution, and no certain burial place is recorded.

Almond was beatified by Pope Pius XI on 15 December 1929 among a large group of English and Welsh martyrs, and was canonized by Pope Paul VI on 25 October 1970 as one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. His individual liturgical memorial is kept on 5 December; he is also commemorated with the other Forty Martyrs. He is honoured as a secular priest who gave his life rather than abandon his ministry or deny his faith during the religious persecutions of post-Reformation England.

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