John Ogilvie

In Corby, Northamptonshire—an English town with a strong Scottish heritage—a Catholic church registered in March 1980 is dedicated to St John Ogilvie.

John Ogilvie was born in July 1957.

As a martyr of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation he was beatified in 1929 and canonised in 1976 on 17 October, becoming the only post-Reformation Scottish saint. His feast day is celebrated on 10 March in the Catholic Church.

Saint John Ogilvie, SJ (1579 – 10 March 1615) was a Scottish Catholic martyr. A Catholic priest who served a dwindling Catholic community in 17th century Scotland, he is the only post-Reformation Scottish saint.

It was his hope that some Catholic nobles there would aid him, given his lineage. Finding none, he went to London, then back to Paris, and finally returned to Scotland in November 1613 disguised as a horse trader named John Watson. Thereafter he began to preach in secret, celebrating Mass clandestinely in private homes.

John was the eldest son of Walter Ogilvie, a respected Calvinist who owned the estate of Drumnakeith in Banffshire. At the age of twelve he was sent to the European continent to be educated. He attended a number of Catholic educational establishments, under the Benedictines at Regensburg in Germany and with the Jesuits at Olmutz and Brunn in Moravia. In the midst of the religious controversies and turmoil that engulfed the Europe of that era, he decided to become a Catholic. In 1596, aged seventeen, he was received into the Catholic Church at Leuven, Belgium. He joined the Society of Jesus in 1599 and was ordained a priest at Paris in 1610. After ordination he served in Rouen in Normandy where he made repeated requests to be sent to Scotland to minister to the few remaining Catholics in the Glasgow area. (After 1560 it had become illegal there to preach, proselytise for, or otherwise endorse Catholicism.)