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Biography

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Luis Sotelo was a Spanish Franciscan priest, missionary, and martyr of the early seventeenth century. He was born in Seville in 1574 and entered the Order of Friars Minor. After his formation and ordination he was assigned to the missions of the Spanish overseas territories. He reached the Philippines in the first years of the seventeenth century and from Manila crossed to Japan, where the Catholic Church had been planted in the previous decades by Jesuits and, from the 1590s, by Franciscans as well. Japanese Christianity was then still public in many domains, but the political climate was changing as the Tokugawa shogunate tightened control over the country and over contacts with Portugal, Spain, and the Catholic orders.

In Japan, Sotelo worked as a preacher and organizer of Franciscan activity. He came into contact with Date Masamune, the daimyo of Sendai in northern Honshu. In 1613 Date launched a diplomatic and commercial embassy to New Spain, the Spanish court, and the pope, placing it under the samurai Hasekura Tsunenaga. Sotelo accompanied the embassy as chaplain, interpreter, and advocate. The party crossed the Pacific to Acapulco, traveled through Mexico, and sailed to Spain. In 1615 the envoys were received in Rome by Pope Paul V. During the European sojourn Sotelo sought support for the Japanese mission and for Franciscan jurisdiction there, in a context of long-standing rivalry with the Society of Jesus over the care of Japanese Christians. The embassy remained in Europe for several years before returning by the same trans-Pacific route, via New Spain and the Philippines.

While Sotelo was abroad, the Tokugawa government moved from restriction to outright prohibition of Christianity, with expulsions of missionaries and increasing pressure on Japanese converts. Despite the ban, Sotelo attempted to resume work in Japan. He was arrested and held in captivity for a long period. On 25 August 1624 he was put to death by burning at Ōmura, together with a group of companions that included other religious and Japanese Catholics. The martyrdom formed part of the persecution that drove the Japanese Church underground for generations.

Sotelo was beatified by Pope Pius IX on 7 May 1867 as one of the 205 Martyrs of Japan. He has not been canonized. Historical knowledge of his life rests on Franciscan mission records, Spanish and Roman documents connected with the so-called Keichō embassy of Hasekura Tsunenaga, and the later processes for beatification. He is commemorated as a missionary who linked Seville, Manila, the domain of Sendai, the courts of Spain and Rome, and the execution ground at Ōmura, and who died for the Christian faith under the Tokugawa edicts.

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