St. John of Cologne, Priest, and Companions, Martyrs
Obligatory Memorial
John Heer, an outstanding witness to Catholic truth and pastoral charity, was born in Germany at the beginning of the 16th century. He was a friar of the convent of Cologne and earnestly asked his superiors to allow him to go to Holland, in order to support Catholics who were suffering under severe Calvinist persecution.
While serving there as parish priest of the church of Hoornaar, he was captured by heretics and died a martyr, strangled by hanging outside the walls of the city of Brielle on the Meuse, in South Holland, around midnight between July 8 and 9, 1572. He died together with 18 other priests and religious, most of whom came from the nearby city of Gorcum.
All of them were hanged for the Catholic truth concerning the Eucharist and the primacy of the Roman Pontiff in the Church. Their bodies were then dismembered.
Clement X solemnly beatified him and his companions on November 24, 1675; Pius IX proclaimed them saints on June 29, 1867.
Proprium Officiorum Ordinis Praedicatorum ad Normam Decretorum Sacrosancti Oecumenici Concilii Vaticani II Instauratum Vincentii Couesnongle iussu editum, Editio typica, Sanctae Sabinae, Romae 1982.
