Saint Pierre Néron (Bắc)

Pierre Néron was born in 1818 into a farming family in France. His childhood was spent tending animals to help his parents while going to school.

At nineteen he asked to join the Paris Foreign Missions Society. On June 17, 1848, he was ordained a priest and sent to the Vicariate of Western Tonkin.

In 1849 he arrived in Hà Nội. He learned Vietnamese at Kẻ Vĩnh and took the Vietnamese name Bắc. He taught seminarians at Vĩnh Trị, and then was sent to the Sơn Tây area, where there were a great many faithful.

The farmer’s son from France now moved among the rice fields of northern Vietnam, from the classroom to the Catholic communities. Perhaps a childhood of tending animals and working the fields helped him feel closer to the Vietnamese farmers.

In the years of persecution, he moved between Tạ Xá and Yên Tập, secretly visiting the faithful. One day the canton chief led men to the church of Tạ Xá to arrest him.

He was taken to Sơn Tây. The mandarin pressed him to name the villages he had passed through and the families who had sheltered him. The mandarin also wanted him to confess to inciting the people against the court.

He named no one. He did not admit to the political charge. He said he had come here only to preach the religion of God.

During about three months of imprisonment, he fasted for twenty-one days. Twenty-one days without food, only praying and waiting. His body wasted away. But his heart remained at peace.

He said:

“I am ready; my fate is in God’s hands.”

Those words are complete surrender. He did not try to save himself or look for a way out. He simply placed himself in God’s hands and let God decide.

On November 3, 1860, Father Pierre Néron (Bắc) was beheaded at the execution ground of Sơn Tây. He was forty-two. His body was buried in the church of Bách Lộc.

He was beatified on May 2, 1909, and canonized on June 19, 1988. His own feast day is November 3.

Father Bắc left few sayings. But the one people still remember is enough to sum up his whole life: “my fate is in God’s hands.”

From a farm boy in France to a priest who died at Sơn Tây, he never charted his own road; he let God lead him. And he kept secret the names of those who helped him, so that they could go on living and keeping the faith.

In times of unease, when we worry about the future, perhaps we too can say to God as Father Bắc did: I am ready; my life is in Your hands.