The feast-day of St. David Lewis, Priest & Martyr, is 26th August; therefore, the Novena to the saint begins on 17th August.
Download the Novena to St. David Lewis.
Born in Abergavenny in 1616, David Lewis was the youngest of nine children of Reverend Morgan Lewis, the Protestant headmaster of King Henry VIII grammar school, and Margaret Pritchard, a Catholic.
He was ordained a Catholic priest on 20 July 1642, joining the Society of Jesus three years later. For more than 30 years he served Catholic communities in Usk, Abergavenny and the surrounding areas, and was known as Tad y Tlodion or Father of the Poor.
David Lewis became the last Catholic martyr in Wales when he suffered the gruesome death of being hanged, drawn and quartered on 27 August 1679. A plaque in Usk stands a few hundred feet away from the place of his execution and martyrdom. He is buried in the churchyard at St. Mary’s Priory in Usk.
Together with Sts. John Wall, John Kemble and thirty-seven other martyrs, St. David Lewis was canonised by Pope St. Paul VI in 1970 under the title, “the Six Welsh Martyrs and their Companions” (or, as they are known in the dioceses of England, “the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales”).
In November 2007, a plaque was erected on the spot where Lewis was arrested near Llantarnam Abbey. The Catholic parish in Usk, originally dedicated soley to St Francis Xavier, has now been jointly dedicated as “Sts. David Lewis & Francis Xavier Church.”