NOVEMBER 6
1745 – 1861 [O. P.]
Bl. Ignatius Delgado and companions, martyrs in Vietnam.
In the 350 years since Christianity began to flourish there through the zeal of the French Jesuit Alexandre Rhodes, Vietnam has been exceedingly rich in martyrs, and particularly during the fifty years just prior to the establishment of the French Protectorate in 1883, when an estimated 300,000 suffered death or extreme hardship as their homes and villages were destroyed.
After 1832, the Annamite king Minh Mang excluded all foreign missionaries and required native Christians to apostatize by trampling the cross underfoot.
His edict of 1839 required all his subjects to take a personal part in the erection of pagan temples “in every village, and to sacrifice at stated times in honor of ancestors and the spirits. . . . .
“After the publication of this edict, if there are still in our kingdom Christian rebels or those whose submission is but exterior. . . .
“We shall punish without pity both the incorrigible Christian and the negligent official.”
Up to the present, 117 Vietnam martyrs have been beatified.
The Dominicans to whom the vicariate of eastern Tonkin was confided in 1693 account for thirty of these, six being bishops and nine, lay tertiaries.
In 1883, Bl. Ignatius Delgado, vicar apostolic who had come from Spain as a young Dominican nearly fifty years before, was sentenced to be beheaded; but before the sentence was carried out he died of hunger, thirst, and exposure to the sun in a cage that was so small that he could not even stand up.
Among the laymen who suffered at the same time were three soldiers who after a year gave in and trampled on the cruxifix, but then recovered themselves and disvowed their action.
Two were cut in half with a saw and the third strangled.
They too are beatified: Augustine Huy, Nicholas Bui The, and Dominic Dat.
LIVES OF THE SAINTS
Father Augustine Kalberer, O. S. B.
November 6: Blessed Ignatius Delgado and Companions
Pages 404 – 405
CCC – LA ROSA TRANSCULTURAL PEACE HISTORY 1745 – 2009
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