ST LEO IGNATIUS MANGIN, SJ AND CHINESE MARTYRS - 09th July

 ST LEO IGNATIUS MANGIN, SJ AND CHINESE MARTYRS

    When the uprising of the “Boxers” (a secret Chinese society who began a persecution of Catholics in 1898) which had begun in Shandong and then spread through Shanxi and Hunan, 

    also reached South-Eastern Tcheli, which was then the Apostolic Vicariate of Xianxian, in the care of the Jesuits, the Christians killed could be counted in thousands. 

    Among these were four French Jesuit priests, Leo Mangin, Paul Denn, Remy Isore and Modeste Andlauer and thousands of Chinese lay Christians. 

    All suffered martyrdom in the month of July 1900. The Boxers broke down the Church doors and confronted the Catholic Congregation. They gave people one last chance to renounce 

    their faith, but only a few did so. Then the shooting began. Denn intoned the “I Confess” and Mangin pronounced the words of absolution. They were among the first to be killed and 

    then the attackers fired into the congregation and slashed at people with swords, before setting fire to the Church roof. Their bones remained in place until 1901 when they were 

    collected and placed in coffins and then buried in the new Church erected on the same site. Martyrs in this persecution were beatified by Pope Pius XII in 1955. 

    Pope John Paul II canonized them in 2000.




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