St. Andrew Dung-Lac and the Vietnamese Martyrs

Month of Saints - Day 14 & 15

I have a pretty busy day scheduled for tomorrow and will probably not have time to post, so today I will feature a group of Saints to make up the difference.

On June 19, 1988, Pope John Paul II canonized a group of 117 martyrs who died for the Roman Catholic Faith in Viet Nam in the nineteenth century. The group was made up of ninety-six Vietnamese, eleven Spaniards, and ten French. Eight of the group were bishops, fifty were priests and fifty-nine were lay Catholics.

St. Andrew Dung-Lac, who represents these heroes, was born Trần An Dũng in 1795 to a poor, non-Christian family.  He was taught by a Christian lay catechist and worked in the missions with the priests of the Foreign Mission Society of Paris.  He took the name Andrew (Andre) at his baptism and was ordained a priest on March 15, 1823. During persecution, Andrew Dũng changed his name to Lạc to avoid capture, and thus he is memorialized as Andrew Dũng-Lạc.

The Vatican estimates the number of Vietnamese martyrs at between 130,000 and 300,000. The tortures these individuals underwent are considered by the Vatican to be among the worst in the history of Christian martyrdom. The torturers hacked off limbs joint by joint, tore flesh with red hot tongs, and used drugs to enslave the minds of the victims. Christians at the time were branded on the face with the words "ta dao" (左道, lit. "Left (Sinister) religion") and families and villages which subscribed to Christianity were obliterated.

The letters and example of Théophane Vénard, French Catholic missionary who is numbered among the martyrs, inspired the young Saint Thérèse of Lisieux to volunteer for the Carmelite nunnery at Hanoi, though she ultimately contracted tuberculosis and could not go.  The feast day of St. Andrew Dung-Lac and the Vietnamese Martyrs is November 24.