Saint Ignacio Delgado (Y), Bishop

Ignacio Delgado was born in 1762 in Villafeliche, in the region of Aragón, Spain. He entered the Dominican Order, was sent to Manila to study, and was ordained a priest in 1787. In 1790 he came to Vietnam and took the Vietnamese name Y.

He taught at the seminary and then became vicar general. In 1795 he was consecrated a bishop. When the previous bishop died, he took charge of the Vicariate of Eastern Tonkin. Later, Bishop Henares (Minh) became his coadjutor, sharing the burden with him.

The two bishops visited all the Catholic communities, reopened the seminary, and trained priests and catechists. In the relatively peaceful years under Emperor Gia Long, the community grew, schools were rebuilt, vocations flourished.

Bishop Y had received permission to preach from Emperor Gia Long himself. He lived in Vietnam for nearly half a century, spoke Vietnamese, understood the Vietnamese, loved the Vietnamese.

Then in 1838, under Emperor Minh Mạng, the manhunt came. All that he had labored to build was scattered.

In 1838, after an informer’s tip and the discovery of a letter, Bishop Y was arrested. They shut him in a wooden cage and took him to Nam Định.

Before the court, he calmly explained:

“I have been in Annam for 48 years; I have papers from the late Emperor (Gia Long) permitting me to preach the faith.”

The mandarins wanted to charge him with spying for foreigners. He would not admit it, because he had never done such a thing. He had only come to preach the faith. And when the mandarins questioned him about the religion, the old man looked at them and said:

“If you knew the religion of Jesus, you would surely follow it.”

No resentment, no reproach. Only the wish that the very men condemning him might also come to know God.

A mandarin asked him why he did not end his life to spare himself suffering. He replied:

“We are not allowed to take our own lives, for that is a grave sin. But if, for the faith, you order me to be killed, I will be very glad.”

Forty-three days in a wooden cage, out in the open. A seventy-six-year-old man, sick and exhausted. On July 12, 1838, before the order of execution arrived from the capital, Bishop Ignacio Delgado (Y) died in his cage.

But the sentence still had to be carried out. The soldiers even burned the soles of his feet to make sure he was dead. Then they carried his body to the Bảy Mẫu execution ground and cut off the head. The head was hung up, and then thrown into the Vị Hoàng river. Later the faithful recovered it and buried it with his body.

He was beatified on May 27, 1900, and canonized on June 19, 1988. His own feast day is July 12.

When people think of Bishop Y, they easily remember the wooden cage and the head thrown into the river. But it is worth remembering even more the nearly fifty years he lived for the Church in Vietnam: the seminaries, the priests, the Catholic communities.

And remember what he said to the mandarins: “If you knew the religion of Jesus, you would surely follow it.” To the very last moment, that old shepherd’s heart had no room for hatred. Only the wish that everyone, even those killing him, might come to know the Love he had known.