Saint John Ogilvie
(St. John Ogilvie)

1579 - 1615

Scotland's only post-Reformation saint. Born into a Protestant family in Keith (Moray), Ogilvie was educated in Europe and converted to Roman Catholicism in 1596. He continued his education in Regensburg (Germany) and Brno (Czech Republic) before being ordained as a Priest in Paris (1610). He returned to Scotland in 1613 disguised as a soldier and secretly offered mass to Scottish Catholics. However, he was captured by the authorities, tried in Edinburgh and hanged at Glasgow Cross. Ogilvie was canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1976 following the miraculous recovery of a cancer-sufferer from Easterhouse, where there is a Roman Catholic church named in Ogilvie's honour. There is also a St. John Ogilvie Church in Irvine (North Ayrshire) and High Blantyre (South Lanarkshire).

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