In keeping with Father Bernard's excellent sermon on Sunday about the coming persecution, here is a story about some real martyrs.  May God grant all of us the grace to persevere no matter what may come our way!!

Les Martyrs du Viêt-Nam
From 1625 to 1886 between 130,000 and 300,000 Catholic men, women, and children died during the persecutions in Tonkin, Cochinchina and Annam in modern-day Vietnam. The tortures these individuals underwent were among the worst in the history of Christian martyrdom. The means included cutting off limbs joint by joint, ripping living bodies with red hot tongs, and use of drugs to enslave the minds of the victims. Christians at the time were branded on the face with the words ta dao (false religion) and families and villages which subscribed to Christianity were obliterated.

Among the 117 were 96 Vietnamese and 21 foreign missionaries. Of the Vietnamese group were 37 priests and 59 lay people, among whom were catechists and tertiaries. One of them was a woman, mother of six. Of the missionaries was 11 Spaniards; 6 bishops and 5 priests, all Dominicans, and 10 were French; 2 bishops and 8 priests from Société des Missions Etrangères in Paris. 76 were beheaded, 21 suffocated, 6 burnt alive, 5 mutilated and 9 died in prison as a result of torture.
The 117 martyrs were beatified in four groups, the first of them on 27 May 1900 (Pope Leo XIII), the second (all Dominicans) on 20 May 1906, a third on 2 May 1909 (both by Pope Pius X) and the last (including two Spanish bishops) on 29 April 1951 (Pope Pius XII).