TRAMPLING ON THE CROSS

The Vietnamese learned from the Japanese the strategy of putting a cross of Jesus Christ on the ground and having people walk over it and stamp on it. If they refused, they were ordered to be persecuted or executed. Five cases follow, which demonstrate the various ways in which Vietnamese responded to this challenge.

Francis Do Van Chieu was a catechist. He refused to walk upon the cross and used these words to the governor, "Would you permit that a son should walk on the body of his father stretched out on the ground? How much less will it be licit for me to walk on the image of the Lord of heaven and earth whom all the world ought to love and adore"?

Joseph Hoang Luong Canh, seventy years old, was a medical doctor. He was forced by the persecutors to put his legs on the cross, but he refused; he took back his legs with force, and after being hit many times he said to the judge, "Let me die with my priest."

Fr. Joseph Tuân, O.P., was a Dominican priest. Since he refused to walk on the cross, he simply sat down. The persecuters picked him up and strove to bring him over the cross, but he resisted.

Fr. Vincent Dó Yên, O.P., seventy-four, was another Dominican priest. The judge, wishing to save him, tried to make him appear as a doctor, not a priest; further, he drew a circle on the ground and said if he stepped on that it would be sufficient. The Dominican replied, "I am not a doctor but a priest. I die willingly and will not accept this favor you offer me as the price of a lie."

Thomas Khuong was born of a noble family. He became a secular priest and was arrested under the persecution of Minh Mang; he was then offered liberty in consideration of his noble origin. He had lived always hidden in a secure place; but having wished to transfer to another site he was recognized by a Christian and handed over, because of his hesitation to cross a bridge where there was exposed a cross on the earth. To the proposal of stepping on a cross in exchange for his liberty he replied, I am a priest of Jesus Christ and now I am eighty years old; since my boyhood I have been a Christian obedient to the precepts of the Catholic faith, and to the faithful observance of these I have always exhorted the Christian people. If now, an old man, I should say to Christians, 'stamp on the cross, abandon the faith,' you could say with truth that I am no longer a man. My one and only desire, and an ardent one, is then to die even a hundred thousand times for my holy religion. Jesus Christ to redeem the human race voluntarily suffered death; I also wish to render him love for love, pouring out all my blood for him. After a month of imprisonment, he was decapitated in 1860.

John the Baptist Con was devoted to the priests. He was always ready to help them, to guide them, to escort them, to hide them. To a question by the mandarin in a trial he replied, "Grand mandarin, we are no way repentant, because it is a good work which we are doing. The only way to correct us is to put us to death, because if you send us away the first priest we meet, even if he be a European, we will be hiding him again; the priests teach us good, they are our fathers; how would we be able to abandon them?

Anthony Nam was a doctor and a catechist. To one of his daughters who was weeping, he said, "Mary, my daughter, do not weep, you will make me sad; rejoice rather for me, praise God, thank him that he has judged me worthy of the outstanding favor of giving my life for my faith."

Bernardo Vu van Duê was a secular priest of eighty years. Deaf and almost blind, incapable of moving by himself, he was hidden by the Christians. But when he heard that his Spanish Bishop Delgado was imprisoned, he had no peace and wanted to die with him; he kept shouting that he was a priest and that the soldiers should come to arrest him. They therefore took him and subjected him to all kinds of threats, finally condemning him to death by beheading, despite the law forbidding the death penalty for those over eighty.

Antonio Nguyen Dich was the father of ten children. One of those died as a martyr and another was exiled for the faith. His life was spent taking care of lepers, travellers, the abandoned and priests. Once when a priest was discovered in his house, he was arrested, cruelly tortured and decapitated, at the age of seventy.

Beatification and Canonization
Various groups of the Vietnamese martyrs were beatified by Leo XIII on May 27, 1900, by Pius X on April 2, 1906, by Pius X again on May 2, 1909 and by Pius XII on April 29, 1951. They were all canonized on June 19, 1988.