Saint John Baptist Trần Ngọc Cỏn

John Baptist Trần Ngọc Cỏn was born in 1805 in the village of Kẻ Báng, Vụ Bản district, Nam Định province. He was a plain farmer who plowed and planted to support his family.

At that time a village headman was abusing his power and seizing people’s property. Everyone knew, but no one dared speak up. Cỏn did. He took the man to court, and won.

From then on the villagers trusted him, and they chose him as their headman. The farmer who had stood up for the people now ran the affairs of the whole village.

He cared for the villagers’ souls as well as their affairs. On stormy nights he would walk through the rain to bring a priest to the bedside of the dying, so that no one had to die without the last sacraments.

When Emperor Minh Mạng’s ban on the faith came down, he used his position as headman to find hiding places for priests. All eyes were on a headman, so it was a very dangerous thing to do. He did it anyway.

In May 1840, Governor Trịnh Quang Khanh brought soldiers to surround the village of Kẻ Báng. Three priests were arrested, and with them the headman Cỏn and the parish elder Martin Thọ.

Cỏn was taken to Nam Định for the crime of sheltering priests.

The mandarin ordered the two men to step on the cross. They refused. Cỏn was given fifty strokes of the rod, left out in the sun and denied food and water.

Then the soldiers lifted both men off the ground to drag them over the holy image by force. The two drew up their feet so they would not touch the cross, and said to the mandarin:

“Faith lives in the heart; if Your Excellency forces us and our hearts do not consent, we commit no sin!”

Simple words, and deep ones. Faith is not in the feet but in the heart. Men can carry a body wherever they like, but no one can force a heart.

When he knew his execution was near, he asked to go to confession. He wanted to go to God with a clean soul.

On November 8, 1840, the headman John Baptist Cỏn was executed at the Bảy Mẫu execution ground, Nam Định. His body was taken back to Kẻ Báng, the village he had served.

He was beatified on May 27, 1900, and canonized on June 19, 1988. His own feast day is November 8.

One thread runs through Cỏn’s whole life: he dared to stand up. He stood up to a corrupt official in court. He stood up to shelter priests. He stood up and said “no” to the governor.

People like the headman Cỏn are the salt of the earth. They live their faith outside church too, in the life of the village and the country, defending the weak, opposing injustice and protecting what is holy. A good citizen and a good Christian: Cỏn was both, nearly two hundred years ago.