Luis Sotelo

Blessed Luis Sotelo, OFM
Luis Sotelo, speaking with Hasekura Tsunenaga and other Japanese in Rome. Sala Regia, Quirinal Palace, Rome.
Born	6 September 1574 Seville, Spain
Died	25 August 1624 Ōmura, Japan
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church
Beatified	7 July 1867 by Pope Pius IX
Feast	25 August

Blessed Luis Sotelo, also known as Louis Sotelo, (September 6, 1574 – August 25, 1624) was a Franciscan friar who died as a martyr in Japan, in 1624, and was beatified by Pope Pius IX in 1867.

Luis was born in Sevilla, Spain, and studied at the University of Salamanca before entering the convent of "Calvario de los Hermanos Menores". He was sent, in 1600, to the Philippines, in order to take on the spiritual needs of the Japanese settlement of Dilao, until it was destroyed by Spanish forces, in 1608, after intense fighting.

In 1608, Pope Paul V authorized minor religious orders (Dominicans and Franciscans) to proselytize in Japan, heretofore the preserve of the Jesuits. Sotelo spent four years in Manila, learning the Japanese language before going to Japan and taking a leading role there.

Luis tried to establish a Franciscan church in the area of Edo (present-day Tokyo). The church was destroyed in 1612, following the interdiction of Christianity in the territories of the Tokugawa shogunate on April 21, 1612. After a period of intense missionary activity by the Catholic Church, Hidetada Tokugawa, the second shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty, issued a decree which banned the practice and teaching of the Christian faith, and under the threat of loss of life, all the missionaries had to leave Japan. This decree started the bloody persecution of Christians, which lasted several decades.

After the healing in Edo of a concubine of the powerful daimyō of Sendai, Date Masamune, Luis was invited to the northern part of Japan, in the area controlled by Date, under whom Christianity was still allowed. He came back to Tokyo the following year and constructed and inaugurated a new church on May 12, 1613, in the area of Asakusa Torigoe. The Bakufu reacted by arresting the Christians, and Luis himself was put in the Kodenma-chō (小伝馬町) prison. Seven fellow Japanese Christians, who had been arrested with Luis, were executed on July 1, but he was freed following a special request by Date Masamune.