Sts. Andrew Dũng-Lạc and Companions

Sts. Andrew Dũng-Lạc and his Companions are the Martyrs of Vietnam, a great host of bishops, priests, religious, and lay men and women who gave their lives for the faith during the fierce persecutions that swept the land from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. It is thought that well over a hundred thousand Christians perished in these long trials, of whom one hundred and seventeen are honored by name.

Andrew Dũng-Lạc, born to a poor family around 1795 and ordained a diocesan priest, ministered faithfully to his people through repeated waves of arrest and was beheaded in 1839. Among his companions were Vietnamese and foreign missionaries alike, who suffered imprisonment, torture, and death in every cruel form rather than trample on the cross or deny their Lord. Canonized together by Pope St. John Paul II in 1988, they stand as witnesses to the deep roots of the faith in Vietnam, and their feast is kept on 24 November.