By Rev. J. Francis Sofie, Catholic Exchange, October 25, 2024
Fr. Francis Sofie (1964-2024) began his theological studies in 1990 at the Angelicum in Rome with the Community of the Eternal Word based in Birmingham, Alabama. He completed his theological studies at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia, graduating Magna Cum Laude with a MA in Systematic Theology and a MDiv.
Editor’s Note: This article is adapted from a chapter in Rev. J. Francis Sofie’s book Martyrs of the Eucharist: Stories to Inspire Eucharistic Amazement, available from Tan Books.
Imagine living in world in which simply being a Catholic priest was a capital offense; imagine, too, that in this world, any person who hosted a priest in one’s home or hid a priest from the authorities was guilty of a capital offense. That was the world in which St. Anne Line lived. But what is so amazing in the case of Anne Line is that it was a world into which she knowingly entered. Anne chose to become Catholic at a time when practicing the Catholic faith in England was illegal and punishable even by death.
At her birth, she was given the name Alice by her Protestant parents. Her father was a leading Puritan, and her grandfather helped King Henry VIII in “reforming” the Church in England. When Alice announced to her family, sometime in the 1580’s, that she, her brother William, and her husband Roger were entering into the Catholic Church, they were summarily disinherited from the family. …