Mercy When It Counts Most

Note: On Tuesdays and some Sundays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.

He was about thirty-five years old, a Jesuit novice after eleven years of study. And he was never going to become a priest now. Instead, he, two of his Japanese Jesuit confreres, seventeen laymen, and six Franciscan missionaries were about to be killed for their faith.

The twenty-six had been marched six hundred miles from Kyoto to Nagasaki over...