SAINT ANDREW DUNG LAC !!!
St. Andrew Dung-Lac
MARTYR
Feast: November 24
Vietnamese priest and martyr and companion of St. Peter Thi. Andrew was arrested and beheaded on Dcember 21, 1839, with Peter Thi during the harsh anti-Christian persecutions. He was canonized in 1988.
Feast Day: November 24
Born: 1785 in Vietnam
Died: 21 December 1839 in Hanoi, Vietnam
Canonized: 19 June 1988 by Pope John Paul II
St. Andrew was one of 117 martyrs who met death in Vietnam between 1820 and 1862. Members of this group were beatified on four different occasions between 1900 and 1951. Now all have been canonized by Pope John Paul II.
Christianity came to Vietnam (then three separate kingdoms) through the Portuguese. Jesuits opened the first permanent mission at Da Nang in 1615. They ministered to Japanese Catholics who had been driven from Japan.
The king of one of the kingdoms banned all foreign missionaries and tried to make all Vietnamese apostatize by trampling on a crucifix. Like the priest-holes in Ireland during English persecution, many hiding places were offered in homes of the faithful.
Severe persecutions were again launched three times in the 19th century. During the six decades after 1820, between 100,000 and 300,000 Catholics were killed or subjected to great hardship. Foreign missionaries martyred in the first wave included priests of the Paris Mission Society, and Spanish Dominican priests and tertiaries.
Persecution broke out again in 1847 when the emperor suspected foreign missionaries and Vietnamese Christians of sympathizing with the rebellion of one of his sons.
The last of the martyrs were 17 laypersons, one of them a 9-year-old, executed in 1862. That year a treaty with France guaranteed religious freedom to Catholics, but it did not stop all persecution.
By 1954 there were over a million and a half Catholics—about seven percent of the population—in the north. Buddhists represented about 60 percent. Persistent persecution forced some 670,000 Catholics to abandon lands, homes and possessions and flee to the south. In 1964, there were still 833,000 Catholics in the north, but many were in prison. In the south, Catholics were enjoying the first decade of religious freedom in centuries, their numbers swelled by refugees.
During the Vietnamese war, Catholics again suffered in the north, and again moved to the south in great numbers. Now the whole country is under Communist rule.
Comment:
It may help a people who associate Vietnam only with a recent war to realize that the cross has long been a part of the lives of the people of that country. Even as we ask again the unanswered questions about United States involvement and disengagement, the faith rooted in Vietnam's soil proves hardier than the forces which would destroy it.
Author: johnrigs123
Keywords: nwo new world order age illuminati Vatican Catholicism H.G Wells Annie Besant Blavatski Alice Bailey Lucis Trust socialism Communism Fabianism Tavistock Agenda 21 CFR Club of Rome Environmentalism communitarianism United Nations NATO Rockefeller Freemasonry Brzezinski globalism Obama collectivism individualism fascism occult corporatism ascension enlightenment theosophy lucis lucifer sophism mind Control Venus Project Zeitgeist Addendum banks money false messiah round table
Added: December 3, 2008
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Wind and Crosses
Hot cloudy day in the mountains of Santa Fe, NM I was walking past the one of the many religios sites and took a clip of the cross on top of the church through a wind mill.
Author: OhioDisplays
Keywords: cross church religious wind vinnie papa
Added: December 3, 2008
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