All Saints Day / St. Jerome Hermosilla

Happy Feast of All Saints!  If you have been my FB friend for a year or more, you know that I celebrate All Saints Day for the full month of November (actually, I celebrate year round, but only subject you to it for 30 days!).  If you have a favorite Saint or Blessed of the Catholic Church that you would like to hear about, let me know - or if you just want to know "Who is the patron Saint of _____?"  I will try to honor all requests -- and I already have a couple that I will get to over the next few days.

For today, however, I got to thinking about all the poor Saints and Blesseds who never get their Feast Day honored on the Liturgical Calendar because they are always trumped by a major Solemnity such as All Saints.  According to Catholic Online (catholic.org), one of my primary sources, there are no less than 25 Saints and Blesseds whose Feast Day is November 1, so they have to share their day with all the saints.  One of these is St. Jerome Hermosilla.

St. Jerome was born in La Calzada, in old Castile.  He joined the Dominicans and was sent first to Manila where he was ordained to the priesthood in 1828.  He was then sent as a missionary to Vietnam.  The Catholic Church was devastated by rebellion and persecution in the late 18th century, but it had revived by the time of St. Jerome Hermosilla in the 19th century.  However, Converts began to be harassed without official edicts in the late 1820s, by local governments. In 1831 the emperor passed new laws on regulations for religious groupings in Viet Nam, and Catholicism was then officially prohibited. Both Missionaries and converts suffered persecution and martyrdom throughout the next 10 years until the emperor's death in 1841. However, some persecution still continued after the new emperor took office. Catholic villages were forced to build shrines to the state cult.

St. Jerome survived this period of persecution. He was eventually Consecrated a bishop and succeeding St. Ignatius Delgado as vicar apostolic, Jerome was arrested by Vietnamese authorities and was horribly tortured and then beheaded. He was canonized by St. John Paul in 1988 along with thousands of other Vietnamese martyrs.