Vietnam's history has
long been marked by the cross. It includes several severe persecutions
of Catholics. St. Andrew Dung-Lac, a parish priest, is one of 117 canonized
[1988] Martyrs, ninety-six of whom were Vietnamese, eleven, Spaniards,
and ten, French. The group included eight bishops, fifty priests, and fifty-nine
lay Catholics who were slain between 1820-1862. The Portuguese brought
the faith to Vietnam. In 1615 Jesuits opened the first permanent mission
in Da Nang to minister to Japanese Catholics who had been driven from Japan.
The king of one of the three kingdoms of Vietnam banned all foreign missionaries.
Priests went into hiding in Catholic homes. Later in the nineteenth century
three more persecutions occurred. One of them was caused by the emperor's
thinking that Christians were in favor of his son, who was rebelling against
him. Foreign missionaries were Martyred. The last to be Martyred were seventeen
lay persons, one only nine years old. That year, 1862, a treaty with France
gave religious freedom to Catholics, although persecutions have continued
from time to time. Their Feast Day is November 24.