The Autobiography of a Hunted Priest

I had no idea exactly what I was expecting with this book but what I got was the most fantastic story that I have ever read. I so recommend this book to anyone who loves a great story about a fascinating man. I literally have to force myself to put book down.

I first purchased this book used from a local book store. I have read it once and will probably refer back to it for the remainder of my life. It is the true account of Father John Gerard of the Jesuit Order, a Catholic priest who excercised his vocation at a time when even to be a Catholic in England was Treason by act of Parliament, and to be a priest meant torture and death. The footnotes provided by the translator prove the absolute fact of his account, which is corroborated even by the files of the Elizabethan secret police. Father Gerard tells how he was smuggled into England after his ordination and dunped on a Norfolk beach by night. Working in secret, he managed to reconcile many Protestants to the Catholic Faith and sent more then 30 men to Catholic seminaries abroad. But then he was taken by the "Priest Hunters." His accounts of being imprisoned in the notorious "Clink" and the Tower of London are as compelling as any memoir of Soviet GULAG survivors. He insists that he never gave away any names, despite being brutally tortured, a fact confirmed by the files of the TOwer. His stirring tale of his escape across the Tower moat is as compelling as any fiction. His descriptions of his acquaintance with canonised martyrs like St. Robert Southwell and St. Horace Walpole are very fascinating. The Prologue by Graham Greene is well worth the price of the book in it's self. I shall be very interested to see when this book is finally reprinted, as my own copy is being worn out. Fatehr Gerard, I salute you!!!