St. Nicholas Owen

St. Nicholas Owen was born about 1562 at Oxford in England, of a devout Catholic family, and worked as a carpenter and builder at a time when the practice of the Catholic faith was outlawed and priests were hunted to death. Entering the service of the Jesuit mission in England and becoming a Jesuit lay brother, he devoted his remarkable skill to a single, dangerous work of mercy: the construction of "priest holes," ingenious hiding places built into the walls, floors, and stairways of Catholic houses to shelter priests from the pursuivants who searched for them.

For some two decades, working in secret and often alone, and always by night, he built countless such refuges throughout England with astonishing cunning and craft, saving the lives of many priests and, through them, preserving the faith of the hidden Catholic community. Twice arrested and once ransomed, he was seized again in 1606 in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot and taken to the Tower of London, where he was subjected to savage torture on the rack to make him reveal his secrets and betray others. He died under this torture, betraying no one, on 2 March 1606. Canonized in 1970 among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, he is honored as a patron of illusionists and escapologists.