Thomas More: What does he teach politicians and lawyers of the 21st century?

This June 22, the day on which the feast of Saint Thomas More, a prominent politician, law professor and Catholic lawyer, is celebrated, we seek to answer what the main teachings of this saint are to legal and political professionals of the 21st century.

Thomas More, patron of politicians and rulers, used to say that “man cannot be separated from God, nor politics from morality.”

The lawyer and master of law, Alberto González Cáceres, president of the Santo Tomás Moro Legal Studies Center of Peru, highlighted his ironclad of this saint “defense of conscience and truth“.

“I am referring to the only truth: The one that tells us I am the truth, the path and the life. Not the relativistic truth of the current world that does not hesitate to justify its vices with half-truths and presents us with false paths,” he explained in a statement given to ACI Prensa.

The lawyer commented that although Thomas More was a lawyer with “a lot of legal talent,” before that he was “an average family man, very dedicated to his wife and children and committed to his professional obligations.

“Specific he was a straight man“he stressed.

Thomas More was born in London in 1477. He graduated from Oxford University as a lawyer and had a successful career that ended up taking him to the English parliament and then to serve as chancellor to Henry VIII, the king of England.

He was married to Jane Colt, with whom he had four children; He is also remembered for defending with his life the indissolubility of marriage.

Thomas More was imprisoned and died a martyr for remaining faithful to the primacy of the Pope and for not accepting that Henry VIII separated from the Catholic Church to divorce and remarry.

“To the extent that Henry VIII surrenders to his passions and the world of his time surrenders with little opposition to the power and laws that justified his immoralities, the moment of real men appears. Those who do not subjugate themselves in the face of ephemeral power and flattery of the powerful,” commented González.

“In these circumstances, Saint Thomas More gave his life in defense of his own conscience. His right conscience forced him to remain firm in the defense of the true Church of Jesus Christ: The Roman Catholic Apostolic Church,” he highlighted.

After spending 14 months in prison, Thomas More was beheaded and went to the Father’s House as a martyr on July 6, 1535. On the scaffold, before being executed, the saint said to the crowd: “I die as a good servant of the king, but first servant of God”.

For González, what stands out most about his patron saint “was his firmness during his long martyrdom.”

“His steadfastness while imprisoned, alone and abandoned in the Tower of London and his brilliance and complete calm when he is finally beheaded,” she said.

Finally, the Catholic lawyer recalled that “Christians are called to be other Christs”, as Thomas More achieved.

“He is the model of the martyr, but let us approach martyrdom not as the death that culminates our earthly lives,” he said.

“I am referring to the martyrdom of the man who denies himself for love of his wife, the martyrdom of the son who denies himself for love of his parents, the martyrdom of the ruler for the love and good of his people, the martyrdom of the official who does what is right for the good of the community,” he said.

González stressed that this “is what Jesus Christ and his mother, Mary Most Holy, taught us.”