Saint Edmund Campion

Edmund Campion (1540–1581) was a star of Oxford University who impressed Queen Elizabeth I when she visited in 1566. Troubled in conscience, he left England, was reconciled to the Catholic Church at Douai and joined the Jesuits in Rome in 1573. In 1580 he returned secretly to England, preaching and celebrating the sacraments in hiding and writing a famous challenge to the authorities known as "Campion's Brag." Betrayed and arrested at Lyford Grange, he was tortured and executed at Tyburn on December 1, 1581, and was canonized in 1970 among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales.

Many Catholic schools and colleges in the United States and England bear his name. His words "the expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun" are still quoted as a model of courage.