Nov-24: Feast of St. Andrew Dung-Lac and Companions

On this feast day of St. Andrew Dung-Lac and Companions, the Church remembers the sufferings inflicted on the Vietnamese Church, which are among the most terrible in the long history of Christian martyrdom. 

He represents the suffering and persecution of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese Catholics who died for the faith over the past three centuries, as well as the many Catholics who continue to face persecution as they attempt to practice their religion in communist Vietnam.

All 117 Martyrs of Vietnam, Patron Saints of Vietnam, were canonized by Pope St. John Paul II on June 19,1988. All were tortured and beheaded under the Annamite Emperor Ming-Mang between 1820 and 1862. Each of them have a name and a historically verifiable narrative detailing their sad fate. Of that group of 117, 96 were Vietnamese, 11 Spaniards, and 10 French. There were 8 bishops, 50 priests, 42 lay people, 16 catechists and one seminarian in the group. Of the 117 martyrs, 76 were beheaded, 21 were suffocated, 6 burnt alive, 5 mutilated and 9 died in prison as a result of torture.

Father Andrew Dũng-Lạc alone is named on this feast, merely as a touchstone and not because his sufferings were more depraved than those of his co-martyrs.
Andrew Dung-Lac (born Dung An Trân in 1795, martyred 1839) was  baptised in Vinh-Tri, taking the Christian name Andrew (Anrê) at the age of fifteen, he worked first as a lay missionary and then as a diocesan presbyter who learned Chinese and Latin by himself in order to teach catechesis in the country. As parish priest in Ke-Dâm, he was tireless in his preaching. He often fasted and lived a simple and moral life that was so good an example to the people that many were baptised. He was so beloved that twice his followers paid the ransom for his release. He even changed his name from Andrew Dung to Andrew Lac and moved to another part of the country to preach. Ultimately he and a fellow Vietnamese priest Peter Thi were captured hearing confessions, taken to Hanoi (Vietnam), where both suffered a dreadful torture and were finally beheaded on 21st December 1839.

A brief history of Christianity in Vietnam:

The traditional religion of Vietnam is Buddhism, along with elements of Taoism, Confucianism and local ancestors’ cult. 

Christianity came to Vietnam through the Portuguese Dominican missionaries in 1553. An imperial edict in Vietnam forbade Christianity, and it was not until 1615 that the Jesuits were able to establish a permanent mission at Da Nang, in the central region of the country. 

In 1627, a Jesuit Father Alexander de Rhodes went north to establish another mission, and by the time he was banished 3 years later there were already 6,700 converts.  In that same year the first Christian martyr was beheaded, and more were executed in 1644 and 1645. 

Between 1798 and 1853, a period of intense political rivalry and civil wars, sixty-four known Christians were executed. These were beatified in 1900. 

In 1832, Emperor Minh-Mang banned all foreign missionaries, and tried to make all Vietnamese deny their faith by trampling on a crucifix. Christians were branded on the face with the words "ta dao" (false religion) and Christian families and villages were obliterated. 

Persecution broke out again in 1847 and lasted another 50 years, when the emperor suspected foreign missionaries and Vietnamese Christians of sympathizing with a rebellion led by of one of his sons. Some twenty-eight martyrs from this era were beatified in 1909. The bishop, priests, and Europeans were given “a hundred wounds,” disemboweled, beaten, and slain in many other grisly fashions. This included cutting off limbs joint by joint, ripping living bodies with red hot tongs, and the use of drugs to enslave the minds of the victims.

For a brief period from 1841 to 1848, the persecution abated as France threatened to intervene with warships.

But under a new Emperor wholesale massacres began in 1848. Thousands of Vietnamese Christians were martyred, as well as four bishops and twenty-eight Dominicans

The martyrdoms ended with the Peace Treaty of 1862, brought about by the surrendering of Saigon and other regions to France and the payment of indemnities to France and Spain. 

In all, an estimated 4,799 were martyred and 1,181 died of starvation. Some 10,000 Catholics were forced to flee the area, dispossessed of their lands and exiled from their own regions to starve in wilderness areas

Today there are 26 Catholic dioceses in Vietnam. There are 2228 parishes and 2668 priests. Catholics are about 7% to 8% of the 85 million population.

Scripture:

We remember the words of our Lord Jesus Christ 
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:3-10)
Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you (Matthew 5:11-12).