Today we celebrate the Memorial of Saint Andrew Dung-Lac and Companions, a priest, who along with 117 Vietnamese bishops, priests and laypeople, were martyred for their faith between 1860-62.
Saint Andrew Dung-Lac was born Trần An Dũng in Vietnam in 1795. A convert to Catholicism, he took the name Andrew at his baptism and was ordained to the priesthood on March 15, 1823.
Christianity had initially come to Vietnam from the Portuguese, where Jesuit missionaries opened the first permanent mission at Da Nang in 1615. These Jesuits ministered to Japanese Catholics that had been driven out of Japan.
Severe persecutions of the Christian faith took place at various times in Vietnam, including at least three times in the 19th century alone. In 1832, Emperor Minh-Mang prohibited all foreign missionaries and attempted to make all Vietnamese Catholics renounce their faith. In 1847, the emperor again cracked down on the practice of the faith when he suspected that foreign missionaries and Vietnamese Christians sympathized with a rebellion led by one of his sons. The last of the martyrs were killed in 1862, of which 17 laypersons, including a 9-year-old boy, were condemned to death. It was during this period that Andrew Dung-Lac and Companions were killed.
French colonization of Vietnam in 1862 brought about a treaty that guaranteed religious freedom to Catholics but failed to stop all attempts at persecution. By 1954, there were nearly one million Catholics in north Vietnam, but persistent persecution forced nearly 700,000 to flee to the south. Many of those that remained in the north were later imprisoned in the 1960s and 1970s. During the Vietnam War, Catholics in the north faced continued persecution and many moved to the south. Today, though Vietnam is officially a Communist government, there are approximately seven million Vietnamese Catholics, constituting the fifth largest Catholic population in Asia.
Saint Andrew and Companions were canonized by Pope John Paul II on June 19, 1988.
Saint Andrew Dung-Lac and Companions, pray for the people of the Diocese of Cheyenne and the people of Vietnam.
