Blessed Nicholas Bunkerd Kitbamrung

Who was Blessed Nicholas Bunkerd Kitbamrung?

Blessed Nicholas Bunkerd Kitbamrung was a Thai priest who died for the faith in a Bangkok prison during the Second World War. Born in 1895 to a Catholic family in Nakhon Pathom, west of Bangkok, he spent his priesthood in parishes and on long missionary journeys in the north. In January 1941, at the height of the border conflict between Thailand and French Indochina, he was arrested as a supposed French spy. He spent three years in prison, gave the sacraments to his fellow prisoners, and died there of tuberculosis on January 12, 1944.

Pope John Paul II beatified him as a martyr in Rome on March 5, 2000, the first Thai priest to be beatified. We keep his feast on January 12.

The life of Father Nicholas

A Catholic boy from Nakhon Pathom

He was born on January 31, 1895, to Joseph Poxang and Agnes Thiang Kitbamrung, and was baptized with the name Benedict. In 1908 he entered the seminary at Hang Xan, and after some years as a catechist he went on to the major seminary in Penang, Malaya. On January 24, 1926, he was ordained a priest in the Cathedral of the Assumption in Bangkok.

Teacher and missionary

His first post was as assistant priest at Bang Nok Khwek, a Catholic village in Samut Songkhram province. In 1928 he was sent to Phitsanulok, where he taught the Thai language to newly arrived Salesian missionaries, sons of St. John Bosco, and catechism to their seminarians. Later assignments took him to the north and then to the northeast near the Lao border.

John Paul II, in the beatification homily, said that "Fr Nicolas undertook the difficulties of a mission through the mountains and into Burma" to bring the Gospel to people who had never heard of Christ. He also taught the faith carefully and went looking for Catholics who had drifted away, and he cared for the poor.

Arrest

In late 1940 Thailand went to war with French Indochina, and Catholics, whose faith was associated with the French missionaries, came under suspicion. In January 1941 Father Nicholas rang the bell of the church of St. Teresa to call his people to Sunday Mass. The sound told the soldiers he was there, and he was arrested. He was charged with rebellion against the kingdom and collaboration with the French. After about forty days in local jails he was taken to Bangkok, tried, and sentenced to fifteen years.

A priest in Bang Khwang

In Bang Khwang prison he went on being a priest. The homily says he encouraged his fellow prisoners, taught them the catechism and gave them the sacraments. According to Santi e Beati, he baptized sixty-eight of them. He was moved into the ward for prisoners with tuberculosis, caught the disease and, left without treatment, died on January 12, 1944, a few weeks before his forty-ninth birthday.

His martyrdom and beatification

The Church judged that he died a martyr because his death came from the sufferings of an unjust imprisonment that he bore for his faith. He forgave the people who had falsely accused him. John Paul II beatified him in St. Peter's Square on March 5, 2000, together with St. Pedro Calungsod, Blessed Andrew of Phú Yên and others, and asked that the Church in Thailand be blessed and strengthened through his intercession.

As a martyr he did not need a miracle for beatification. We know of no miracle approved through his intercession, and we do not repeat unverified stories of favors.

Symbols of Blessed Nicholas Bunkerd Kitbamrung in art

He lived in the age of photography, and the images in Thai churches follow his photographs: a slim Thai priest in a black cassock, usually holding a rosary or a crucifix. When he is shown with a palm branch, it is the old sign of a martyr. Statues and painted icons of him now stand in a number of Thai parish churches.

Where Blessed Nicholas is honored

His remains were first laid in the crypt under the altar of the Cathedral of the Assumption in Bangkok, the church where he was ordained. Santi e Beati reports that they were later moved to a shrine built in his honor in his home district of Nakhon Pathom and completed in 2003. Thai Catholics keep his feast on January 12.

Praying with Blessed Nicholas Bunkerd Kitbamrung

We have not found a traditional prayer to him in English with a citable origin, so we do not print one. Ask his help in your own words, especially for prisoners, for the sick, for those falsely accused, and for the Church in Thailand. Let us ask Blessed Nicholas to pray for us, that we may forgive those who wrong us and go on serving God wherever we are put.