Today is the Feast Day of the Vietnamese Martyrs
Saints Andrew Dŭng-Lac and Companions, Martyrs
The Blood of Martyrs is the Seed of Christians
In June 1988, Pope John Paul II canonized the Martyrs of Vietnam. The are often referred to as the Martyrs of Tonkin and Cochinchina, or more broadly as the Martyrs of Indochina. These holy men and women were killed for the faith between 1745 and 1862. The Church estimates that between 130,000 and 300,000 Vietnamese Christians were martyred during this period. While we do not know the names of all who gave their lives, Pope John Paul II canonized 117 of them under the collective title Saints Andrew Dung-Lac and Companions, Martyrs.
In his homily at their canonization, Pope John Paul II said:
I know that you are moved by the desire to honor your brother martyrs, but also by the need to rebuild around their memory the fraternity, friendship, and affection that fill your hearts, since all of you come from the same homeland. In rekindling your memories, it is toward your homeland that you turn with love, longing, and the desire—especially you who live in the diaspora—to experience here a moment of communion rich in hope.
Proclaiming with you Christ crucified, we want today to give thanks to God for the particular witness offered to Him by the martyrs of your Church—whether they were many sons and daughters of Vietnam or missionaries who came from countries where the faith in Christ had already taken root.
Your tradition reminds us that the history of martyrdom in the Vietnamese Church from its beginnings is far broader and more complex. Since 1533, the start of Christian preaching in Southeast Asia, the Church in Vietnam has endured, over three centuries, various persecutions—successive, with only brief pauses—comparable to those faced by the Church in the West during its first three centuries. There were thousands of Christians sent to martyrdom, and countless others died in mountains, forests, and unhealthy regions where they had been exiled.
How can we remember them all? Even restricting ourselves to those canonized today, we cannot linger over each one individually. They are 117: eight bishops, fifty priests, fifty-nine laypeople, and among them one woman, Agnes Le Thi Thành, mother of six children.
It is enough to recall one or two figures, such as Father Vincent Liem, a dominican, martyred in 1773; he is the first of 96 martyrs of Vietnamese nationality. And then another priest, Andrew Dung-Lac, whose parents were poor pagans. Entrusted as a child to a catechist, he became a priest in 1823 and served as pastor and missionary in various parts of the country. Saved from prison several times thanks to ransoms generously paid by the faithful, he ardently desired martyrdom. “Whoever dies for the faith,” he said, “goes to heaven. Instead, we who hide constantly spend money to escape the persecutors! It would be much better to let ourselves be arrested and die.” Sustained by great zeal and the grace of the Lord, he suffered the martyrdom of beheading in Hanoi on December 21, 1839.
In the end, the Vietnamese martyrs remind us that the Church is always built on witness. Thanks be to God for the courageous fidelity of ordinary Christians whose love for Christ outweighs fear, exile, or death.
As John Paul II noted, their memory gathers the faithful into deeper fraternity and hope, especially those far from their homeland. Their lives show that the seed of the Gospel takes root through sacrifice: in bishops and priests, in mothers and laymen, in catechists and missionaries.
We cannot name them all, but we receive their witness as a living inheritance. It is a call to perseverance, to communion, and to a faith that does not retreat. Their blood, shed across centuries, has become the foundation of a living and vibrant Church. To honor them is to renew our own commitment to Christ crucified and to the mission they loved more than life itself.
Pray for us, holy martyrs of Vietnam.
Today’s Mass Collect
O God, source and origin of all fatherhood, who kept the Martyrs Saint Andrew Dŭng-Ląc and his companions faith to the Cross of your Son, even to the shedding of their blood, grant through their intercession, that, spreading your love among our brothers and sisters, we may be your children both in name and in truth. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
© 2025, Lawain McNeil, Mission Surrender, LLC.
The scale of persecution from 1745 to 1862 is staggering when you think about 130,000 to 300,000 martyrs. Andrew Dung-Lac's words about preferring martyrdom over hiding resonates deeply. The fact that he actively desired to face death rather than keep spending money to escape shows a level of convition that's hard to fathom today.