St. Andrew Dũng-Lạc and Companions

Who they were

The Church in Vietnam was built early, grew fast, and paid for it across three centuries of intermittent persecution that historians estimate cost on the order of a hundred thousand lives. Of these, 117 were canonized together in 1988: ninety six Vietnamese and twenty one European missionaries, bishops and priests and, tellingly, a majority of laypeople, including fathers of families, a mother of six, soldiers, fishermen, and catechists.

They are named for Andrew Dung-Lac, a catechist's son who became a priest, was ransomed from arrest once by his own parishioners, arrested again, and beheaded in Hanoi in 1839. The tortures of that era were engineered to produce apostasy, since trampling the cross bought life, and the essential fact belongs on the record without dwelling in the methods: overwhelmingly, they did not trample. Their feast is kept with particular devotion by the Vietnamese diaspora, whose parishes are among the most vigorous in the American Church.

Why people turn to St. Andrew Dũng-Lạc and Companions

Vietnamese Catholic families. And any believer facing pressure to quietly step on what they hold sacred in order to keep a job, a family peace, or a place.

How to ask their intercession

For Vietnamese parishes by name on their feast, and in any situation where the cheap denial is on the table.