Martyr 10 of 117 · Priest
Saint Dominic Vũ Đình Tước
“If you do this, you will only cause your father’s death”
1775 – 1839 · Feast day April 2
Priest, from Trung Lao, Nam Định province · Vietnamese
On the morning of April 2, 1839, the people of the Xương Điền community came running, carrying sticks and spears, some even hauling sacks of rice-husk ash. They wanted to snatch their parish priest back from the soldiers. In the middle of that angry crowd, it was the arrested priest himself who spoke up and told them to stop.
Shepherd of Xương Điền
Father Dominic Vũ Đình Tước was born in 1775 in the village of Trung Lao, Nam Định province. He was trained in the House of God, the community that formed catechists and priests for the Church in Tonkin at that time. After his ordination he joined the Dominican Order and made his solemn profession on April 18, 1812.
He was entrusted with the Catholic community of Xương Điền, in the Vicariate of Eastern Tonkin. In the years of persecution he had no fixed home. One day he stayed in one house, the next day in another, depending on which Catholic families dared to take him in. Mass had to be said in haste, homilies spoken in a whisper, and there was always someone keeping watch at the gate.
He was not a reckless man. He once gave the faithful some very level-headed advice:
“We must flee as best we can, but when we can no longer do so, we must accept God’s will.”
In other words: do not go looking for death, but do not refuse it when it comes.
A morning with no escape
On April 2, 1839, while he was celebrating Mass, a minor official of the eighth rank named Phan led his men to surround and arrest him. Phan had once been rewarded for informing on a bishop, so this time he was all the more eager.
News of the arrest spread very quickly. The people of Xương Điền, enraged, came with whatever they had in their hands, determined to take their priest back. One shout would have been enough to set off a bloody clash. Father Tước understood this. He turned and said to his flock:
“If you do this, you will only cause your father’s death.”
In his own moment of greatest danger, he thought not of being rescued but of the lives of those trying to rescue him.
But in the chaos, one of Phan’s men, named Ngọc, swung a knife and struck him on the head. The wound was too deep. He fell. In his last moments, he asked the faithful around him to pray in silence. And he died right there, surrounded by his spiritual children, kneeling, weeping and praying.
He did not die by a sentence approved by the court, nor at any execution ground. He died among his flock, while trying to keep his flock in peace.
The faithful buried him inside the church of Xương Điền. He was beatified on May 27, 1900, and canonized on June 19, 1988. His own feast day is April 2.
Some people are remembered for having fought. Father Tước is remembered for stopping others from fighting on his behalf. The last words he left Xương Điền were not a call for revenge, but a request: be silent, and pray.
Biography on the website of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Vietnam ↗