Martyrs endured Chinese ire

	St. Lawrence & companions When: Martyred 1637 Where: Nagasaki, Japan Martyrs of China When: Martyred 1648-1930 Where: China Feast: Sept. 28

Sept. 28 is best known as the feast of St. Wenceslaus, patron saint of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bohemia and Moravia. He is the one we sing about in the Christmas carol, "Good King Wenceslaus."

But it is also the feast of two groups of martyrs in the Far East, St. Lawrence Ruiz and his companions, and the Martyrs of China.

Lawrence is the first saint from the Philippines, a country with a heavily Catholic population. He was born into a Chinese Catholic family living in Binondo, the Chinese area of Manila.

In 1636, Lawrence, who was married and had a family, escaped to Japan with a group of Dominican missionaries, to avoid arrest on false charges.

Unfortunately, Japan was no safer. The country's anti-Christian rulers required Christians to walk on images of Mary and the Child Jesus. Those who refused were tortured, then roasted alive in a pit. Anyone who survived a few days of that was beheaded.

That was the fate Lawrence suffered on Sept. 18, 1637, at Nagasaki - a city with many Catholics that became famous in 1945 when the U.S. dropped the second of two atomic bombs on it, thus ending World War II. The others in the group of Dominicans - lay and religious - also were martyred.

Other Christians met a similar death in Japan between 1633 and 1637.

The Martyrs of China are 87 native converts to Catholicism and 33 foreign missionaries who were put to death from 1648 to 1930. Most were killed during the Boxer Rebellion (1898-1900), a time of anti-Western and anti-Christian sentiment.

Among those killed were Wang Cheng, Fan Kun, Ji Yu and Zheng Xu. These four young girls, raised in a Catholic orphanage, when asked to renounced their faith, told their oppressors: "We are daughters of God. We will not betray him."

Pope John Paul aroused the ire of the Chinese government when he canonized the group on Oct. 1, 2000. The government displeasure stemmed, at least in part, in the timing of the canonization, which took place on National Day - the anniversary of the 1949 founding of the People's Republic of China.

None of the martyrs had been killed by the communists, the Vatican said, pointing out that the day was selected because it is the feast of St. Theresa of Lisieux, patron of the missions.

When the Chinese government called the saints "evil-doing sinners," Pope John Paul replied that the church's motive was to "recognize that these martyrs are an example of courage and consistency for all of us and an honor to the noble Chinese people."