Blessed Andrew of Phú Yên

Beside him stood a much older man, his eyes brimming with tears: the priest Alexandre de Rhodes, known to the Vietnamese as Cha Đắc Lộ. For three years he had been the teacher and spiritual father of the young man kneeling before him. Now he could only stand and watch.

“Brothers and sisters, let us answer the love of Jesus our Savior with love. He died for us; let us be ready to give our lives for Him. Keep faith with Jesus to your last breath, to the end of your life.”

His name was Andrew, and Vietnamese Catholics came to know him by the name of his home province: Andrew of Phú Yên. He is the protomartyr of the Church in Vietnam, the first of the hundreds of thousands of martyrs who would follow in his footsteps over the next three centuries and more. One hundred seventeen of them have been canonized; countless others are remembered only by the small Catholic communities where they lived and died.

Seeing in the boy a quick mind that grasped things at once, together with a rare purity of heart, Father de Rhodes asked his mother’s permission to take Andrew as his disciple and brought him to Hội An to raise him. There Andrew eagerly studied Chinese characters, Latin, and the new Romanized script for Vietnamese, then still in its infancy, which Father de Rhodes himself did much to shape. He served at the altar with a reverence that caught the attention of the adults around him.

On July 25, 1644, the governor sent armed soldiers to raid Father de Rhodes’s lodging at Kẻ Chàm. Their main target was an older, better-known catechist named Ignatius. But both Father de Rhodes and the catechist Ignatius were away on mission elsewhere. In the simple lodging house, only the young catechist Andrew sat absorbed in his reading.

The soldiers ransacked the house and carried off the sacred objects. A soldier grabbed Andrew and shouted: “Where is the catechist Ignatius? Where is the Western priest?” Andrew answered calmly:

“They are away; there is only me here.”

The soldier held a sword to his neck, threatening to behead him instead if he would not show where the others were hiding.

In the darkness of the prison, the spiritual father and his spiritual son embraced. Father de Rhodes’s face was etched with grief, but Andrew was filled with a joy that astonished even his teacher. “Father, don’t cry,” he said, holding Father de Rhodes’s hand tightly.

“I thank God for giving me so great a blessing as to wear chains for His name. Please pray that I may stay faithful to the last drop of my blood.”

The night of July 25, 1644, was the young catechist’s last. He knelt all night in the dark prison, praying the Rosary in thanksgiving to God and Our Lady. A few Christians risked their lives to slip in to see him, unable to hold back their tears. Andrew looked at them with eyes full of love and urged them:

“Brothers and sisters, do not cry for me. Thank God that our land has someone allowed to shed his blood as a witness to Him. Hold fast to the faith, love one another, and remember that life in this world is only passing; life in the world to come, in Heaven, is eternal.”

On March 5, 2000, during the Great Jubilee Year, in Saint Peter’s Square in Rome, Pope Saint John Paul II beatified Andrew of Phú Yên and proclaimed him patron of Vietnamese catechists. The Church celebrates him on July 26 each year. In Vietnam, shrines bearing his name have been built at Mằng Lăng, Phú Yên province (his own home parish) and at Phước Kiều, Quảng Nam province, near the place where he shed his blood. About two kilometers from the church of Mằng Lăng, at a place called Lò Giấy, relics connected with the young catechist are still kept.