St. Martha Wang Luo Mande

 For this National Adoption Awareness Month, today's post will feature a Saint who shared the struggle of infertility. 

St. Martha Wang Luo Mande was born in 1812 in the town of Zunji in China. Martha married and lived with her husband on a small vegetable farm in Qingyian. The couple was childless and so adopted two nephews. 

When Martha's husband died, the nephews left home and she moved to the edge of town and ran a small inn. When a Catholic came to town to evangelize, Martha was intrigued. She was baptized in the Church on Christmas Day 1852. She moved to Guiyang where she worked as a cook in a Catholic hostel. When a seminary was opened, she was hired as a cook and cleaning lady for the seminarians.

In 1861, anti-religious soldiers came to the seminary and arrested three of the seminarians. They were sentenced to death for the crime of being Christians. Martha decided to accompany the seminarians to the place of execution. Because she continued to offer support for the seminarians in the face of threats from the soldiers, she too was arrested and condemned. The four of them were beheaded on July 29, 1861. 

St. Martha Wang's feast day is July 29. She was canonized in the year 2000 by Pope Saint John Paul II along with other Chinese Martyrs.