Saint Andrew Dung-Lac and Companions

Martyrs of Vietnam
(died 1745–1862)

Saint Andrew Dung-Lac and his 116 companions, canonised by Pope John Paul II in Rome on June 19, 1988, represent the vast company of martyrs who shed their blood for the Catholic faith in Vietnam over more than three centuries of intermittent persecution. The 117 martyrs include 96 Vietnamese, 11 Spanish Dominicans, and 10 French missionaries of the Paris Foreign Mission Society, encompassing eight bishops, fifty priests, and fifty-nine laypeople of both sexes and all walks of life.

The history of Christianity in Vietnam begins with the arrival of Jesuit missionaries in the seventeenth century, and from the beginning the faith put down deep roots among the Vietnamese people. But the authorities, both of the various Vietnamese kingdoms and later of the unified Vietnamese empire, viewed Christianity as a foreign religion associated with colonial ambitions and subjected it to recurring waves of persecution. Between 1745 and 1862 at least 130,000 Vietnamese Christians died for their faith, a number that makes the Vietnamese martyrology one of the largest in the modern history of the Church.

Andrew Dung-Lac was himself a native Vietnamese priest who was arrested, released on ransom, arrested again, and finally beheaded on December 21, 1839. His name gives the group its canonical title, but the 116 companions represent the full spectrum of the Vietnamese Christian community, from bishops and priests to fishermen and farmers, from elderly men to young women, all united in the same confession of faith and the same willingness to die rather than deny Christ.

They are the patron martyrs of Vietnam and their feast is celebrated on November 24th.