St. Augustine Zhao Rong and Companions

July 9 is the feast of St. Augustine Zhao Rong and his 119 companion martyrs of China, the saints canonized by Pope John Paul II on October 1, 2000. Augustine Zhao Rong was a Chinese soldier who, after escorting the French missionary Bishop Gabriel-Taurin Dufresse to his execution in 1815, was himself converted and ordained priest; he died in prison in 1816. His 119 companions are the 33 foreign missionaries and 87 Chinese laymen, catechists, and priests martyred in China between 1648 and 1930.

The 120 martyrs were killed in five distinct periods of persecution: the persecution of the Qing dynasty in the 18th century, the persecution of the early 19th century, the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, and the Communist persecution of the 20th century. The oldest is seventy-nine, the youngest seven. The feast was added to the Roman calendar in 2002, on July 9, the date of the death of the oldest of the martyrs.

The July 9 feast is the feast of the 120 martyrs — the first canonized saints of China, foreign and Chinese, priest and lay, who gave their lives for the faith in the Middle Kingdom. The pilgrimage of the feast is the pilgrimage of memory: the churches of the Chinese diaspora, from Manila to San Francisco, honour the martyrs whose graves, in most cases, are in China itself.