Martyrs of China

The martyrdom of the 120 was not a single event but the culmination of several waves of persecution linked to the upheavals of Chinese history. The first were victims of the repressions of the 17th and 18th centuries, when Christian preaching was considered subversive: such as the protomartyr Capillas in 1648, then Dominican missionaries and those of the Paris Foreign Missions, and the priest Augustin Zhao Rong in 1815. The vast majority of the group's martyrs, about eighty-six, however, perished in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion (Yihetuan), a nationalist and xenophobic insurrection that attacked foreigners and Chinese Christians accused of collusion with the West. Among them were the French Jesuit Léon-Ignace Mangin, the Franciscan bishop Gregorio Grassi, the Italian Franciscan Francesco Fogolla, the missionary Alberico Crescitelli, Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, as well as simple faithful such as the young Anne Wang, who refused to apostatize. The martyrs belonged to various orders and institutes—Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, Lazarists, Salesians, Paris Foreign Missions—but most were Chinese laypeople and catechists. Their common bond was the refusal to abjure the Catholic faith under threat of death.

The holiness recognized in this group is that of martyrdom, the supreme testimony of faith: all preferred death to apostasy. Hagiographic sources highlight the diversity of the testimony—missionaries who came from Europe out of fidelity to their apostolic vocation, and above all ordinary Chinese Christians, catechists, mothers, and children, who sealed in their own country the faith they had received. This specifically Chinese dimension is essential: the group attests to the rooting of the Gospel within the very heart of the Chinese people, and not as a merely imported religion. Several accounts insist on the courage of humble figures, such as the young Anne Wang, or on the serenity of priests like Léon-Ignace Mangin gathering his faithful for prayer before the massacre. During the canonization, John Paul II recalled that these martyrs, "men and women, of all ages and conditions," had given a strong testimony of their faith in Jesus Christ. Their reputation for holiness, maintained by missionary communities and by the local Church, was progressively recognized by Rome during the 20th century.

Before their joint canonization, the martyrs were recognized in stages as their distinct causes progressed. Several collective beatifications followed: on May 27, 1900, under Leo XIII, in 1909 under Pius X, then on November 24, 1946, and April 17, 1955, under Pius XII, and finally on May 15, 1983, under John Paul II. It was the latter who, during the Great Jubilee of the year 2000, brought all these blessed together in a single celebration: he canonized them together on October 1, 2000, in Saint Peter's Square in Rome, during a ceremony that also inscribed Katharine Drexel, Josephine Bakhita, and Maria Josefa Sancho de Guerra into the catalogue of saints. The choice of the date sparked a sharp diplomatic controversy: as October 1 is the National Day of the People's Republic of China, the Beijing government protested vigorously and denounced the canonization as a provocation, contesting the religious version of the events. The liturgical feast of the entire group has been set for July 9, a day that notably recalls the martyrdom of several victims from 1900.

The heritage of the 120 martyrs of China is above all that of a Church born and tested in persecution. Their canonization has given the Chinese Catholic community, long marked by divisions and restrictions, intercessors and models from its own soil. The fact that the majority of them are Chinese laypeople and catechists—and not primarily Western missionaries—makes them a symbol of the inculturation of the faith and a support for Chinese believers, in mainland China as well as in the diaspora. Their memory is honored every July 9 in the universal Roman calendar, and their leading figure, Augustine Zhao Rong, the first recognized Chinese martyr priest, is particularly venerated as the patron of the indigenous clergy. The orders and institutes from which the foreign martyrs came—Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, Salesians, Paris Foreign Missions, Franciscan Missionaries of Mary—maintain their memory in their own martyrologies. Beyond the persistent political tensions, these saints remain a spiritual reference for the Church's dialogue with China and a testimony to the fruitfulness of the Gospel in the Asian world.