By UCA News Reporter
VIETNAM – Every morning, ten women gather at the Martyrs’ Tomb in Nuoc Ngot Parish in the city of Hue to light incense, recite prayers, and clean the site.
For 53-year-old Maria Nguyen Thi Cay, it is not merely maintenance but an act of love and faith.
“We must keep our ancestors’ home clean and beautiful,” she said. “They courageously gave their lives to bear witness to the Catholic faith and passed that faith on to us.”
Built in 1898 on the site of the parish’s old church, the tomb covers about 1,000 square meters and holds the resting place of Father Joseph Tong Van Vinh, the parish’s first pastor, and 44 parishioners.
They were killed in a raid by soldiers of the then Buddhist rulers. Two of Cay’s ancestors were among the martyrs.
According to Gregorio Tong Phuoc Thanh, 85, a former lay leader, Vinh was beheaded by the soldiers as he prepared to celebrate Mass. His body was thrown into a nearby well, and the attackers set fire to the church, burning alive 44 people.
Thanh, who helped restore the tomb in 2000, said local Catholics have a long tradition of visiting the site to pray and give thanks to the martyrs for protecting them through wars, natural disasters, and epidemics.
On major feast days such as All Saints’ Day, All Souls’ Day, the Feast of the Vietnamese Martyrs, the Month of the Rosary, and Lunar New Year, people gather to pray the rosary, offer incense, attend Mass, and hold family reunions in remembrance of their ancestors who kept the faith alive despite persecution.
“We do this out of reverence, love, and filial piety, one of the Ten Commandments,” Thanh said.
“We believe the living and the dead are connected. Honoring graves is a way of repaying our ancestors’ sacrifices and asking for their protection.”
The parish was founded by missionaries from the Paris Foreign Missions Society (MEP) in the early 18th century. It has about 2,700 Catholics. The parish has produced about 50 priests and religious since 1915.
In the 19th century, during an anti-Christian purge, local authorities built a prison in Con Cat, within parish territory, to detain Catholics before executing them.
Centuries of persecution
For nearly three centuries from the 17th to the 19th, Catholics in Vietnam faced imprisonment, persecution, and death after being accused of following a “false religion” and disloyalty to the royal court.
Church historians estimate that about 100,000 people died for their faith, 117 of whom have been canonized by the Church.
In Hue, then the imperial capital, six execution grounds and nine prisons once held clergy and laypeople. Most of those sites are now markets, parks, cemeteries, government offices, or public spaces.
MEP missionary, Father Joseph Marchand Du (1803–1835), suffered one of the most brutal tortures before martyrdom. His body was mutilated with 100 cuts before being quartered.
His body parts were thrown into the sea on Nov 30, 1835. His head was displayed publicly before being crushed and then cast into the sea.
As well as the Martyrs’ Tomb in Nuoc Ngot, Catholics in Hue also care for 12 graves belonging to anonymous martyrs in Thuong Bon cemetery, a Buddhist burial ground. The 3,000-square-meter site established in 1715 was once used to bury those executed for their faith.
Father Peter Tran Van Quy, former pastor of Phuong Duc Parish, said the martyrs included royal guards, seminarians, and laypeople from various regions who were sentenced to thảo tượng being exiled to cut grass to feed the king’s elephants for refusing to renounce their Catholic faith.
“They were shackled by one leg while working and starved to death between Aug 1717 and Feb 1766,” he said. “Their graves had no markers and were placed far from Catholic communities as punishment. Local people call them the Grass Saints.”
Quy restored their graves in 1999 to honor their sacrifice at the request of then Archbishop Stephanus Nguyen Nhu The of Hue.
“Although they have not been officially canonized, Catholics venerate them as saints because they were courageous witnesses of Christ and faithful to the Church,” he said.
The Grass Saints were among many Catholics who suffered the same sentence and died for the Catholic faith.
In November, hundreds of people visit and offer flowers and incense at the graves of Martyr Saints Joseph Marchand Du and Paul Tong Viet Buong, a Hue native who was beheaded in 1833, as well as at the tombs of the anonymous martyrs.
Suffering strengthens faith
Quy said the belief that the living and the dead are spiritually connected is important to Vietnamese people.
“People express filial gratitude by holding funerals, tending graves, and offering food or prayers,” he said. “They believe the dead, in the eternal realm, will bless and protect their descendants.”
Elizabeth Duong Thi Thanh, 65, who leads a group at Phuong Duc Parish, said they clean the 12 Grass Saints’ graves every week as a sign of gratitude.
She recalled how her Buddhist mother-in-law forbade her from attending church. “She cursed me and forced me to kneel for an hour three times because I was caught going to Sunday Mass,” Thanh said.
“But I kept going secretly and prayed to the Grass Saints to strengthen my faith.”
She endured persecution for nearly six years before her mother-in-law realized her mistake, apologized, and eventually converted to Catholicism before her death.
“In November, I offer Mass stipends to thank the 12 Grass Saints for their intercession. Through them, God granted me freedom and brought my mother-in-law to the faith,” she said.
Her husband has not yet converted, “but every Sunday he takes me to church and drives me to visit the sick,” she said. “I hope one day he will join the Church, as his mother did.”
Le Thi Thu Trang, a local Buddhist, said she and other non-Catholics also visit and light incense at the Grass Saints’ graves and at Saint Marchand Du’s tomb.
“We’ve received their blessings being able to build homes, have obedient and healthy children, family reunions, safe childbirths, and even seeing children freed from addiction or accepted into the seminary,” she said.
For Cay, a mother of three, the martyrs’ protection is deeply personal. She said their intercession saved her thatched house from a fire in 1989 and has kept her family safe through wars and the pandemic.
“We always feel their peace, protection, and intercession,” she said. – UCA News
