On November 24 the Church honors Sts. Andrew Dũng-Lạc and his 116 companions — the 117 Vietnamese martyrs canonized by Pope John Paul II on June 19, 1988. They were killed between 1745 and 1862, in the persecutions carried out by the Nguyen dynasty against a Church that — as in Korea — had grown from lay initiative rather than foreign missionary enterprise. Andrew Dũng-Lạc (1795-1839), a diocesan priest beheaded at Hanoi, was chosen as the representative head of the group. The 117 include 8 bishops, 50 priests, and 59 laypeople — among them a 9-year-old child.
The Vietnamese Church is one of the great stories of Catholic resilience. From the arrival of the first Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century, through the centuries of prohibition and execution, the faith grew until by the 20th century Vietnam had the largest Catholic population in Southeast Asia. The memorial, extended to the universal Church in 2007, honors all 117 canonized martyrs and, through them, the tens of thousands of Vietnamese Catholics who suffered for the faith across three centuries. The principal shrines are at the execution sites around Hanoi and in the diocese of Bac Ninh; Vietnam does not yet have a guide in this directory.
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