In Asia, we are often painfully aware of the animosity between countries, leading at times to much suffering. As Catholics, we should also remember the suffering of our brothers and sisters within the different countries. We may do this by remembering the Feast of the Martyrs of different countries. Today we remember the Vietnamese martyrs, St Andrew Dong-Lac and his companions. Between the years 1820 and 1862, 117 people were killed because they were Catholics. The Vatican estimates that during the period from the introduction of Christianity in the seventeenth century until the end of the Vietnamese war in the twentieth century between 130,000 and 300,000 Vietnamese martyrs were killed. Pope John Paul II decided to canonize those whose names are known and unknown, giving them a single feast day. The last of the martyrs were a group 17 laypersons, one of them a 9-year-old, executed in 1862.

The cross has long been a part of the lives of the people of Asia, but as Jesus promised us, the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church and so the Catholic faith is always stronger than the forces which try to destroy it.