22/06/2026
Today is the feast of Sts John Fisher and Thomas More, martyrs of the English Reformation.
Thomas More refused to support Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Boleyn, nor would he acknowledge Henry as supreme head of the Church in England, by breaking with Rome and denying the pope as head.
During his Apostolic Journey to the United Kingdom in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI, citing Thomas More, spoke about the proper place of religious belief within the political process:
'This country’s Parliamentary tradition owes much to the national instinct for moderation, to the desire to achieve a genuine balance between the legitimate claims of government and the rights of those subject to it. While decisive steps have been taken at several points in your history to place limits on the exercise of power, the nation’s political institutions have been able to evolve with a remarkable degree of stability. In the process, Britain has emerged as a pluralist democracy which places great value on freedom of speech, freedom of political affiliation and respect for the rule of law, with a strong sense of the individual’s rights and duties, and of the equality of all citizens before the law. While couched in different language, Catholic social teaching has much in common with this approach, in its overriding concern to safeguard the unique dignity of every human person, created in the image and likeness of God, and in its emphasis on the duty of civil authority to foster the common good.'
Watch Pope Benedict’s entire address to the Houses of Parliament in Westminster Hall: https://youtu.be/zOhfG4uwhiw
