St. Vicente Liem de la Paz, Dominican Martyr of Vietnam

Who was St. Vicente Liem de la Paz?

St. Vicente Liem de la Paz was a Vietnamese priest of the Order of Preachers, the Dominicans, who was beheaded for Christ on November 7, 1773, near Thang Long, the city we now call Hanoi. He died with a Spanish brother in the order, St. Jacinto Castañeda. When Pope John Paul II canonized the 117 martyrs of Vietnam on June 19, 1988, he chose Vincent Liem as one of the two faces of the whole company: "the first of 96 martyrs of Vietnamese nationality."

We keep his feast on November 7, and with all the Vietnamese martyrs on November 24.

His life

A Christian boy of Tra Lu

Vincent was born in 1732 in the village of Tra Lu, in the province of Nam Dinh in northern Vietnam, then called Tonkin. His parents, Anthony and Mary Doan, were devout Catholics; his father was a respected village headman. As a boy he entered the seminary at Luc Thuy, run by the Dominicans who served the Vicariate of Eastern Tonkin.

Manila

The Dominican missionaries saw promise in him. With a scholarship paid by the king of Spain, they sent him to Manila, to the Colegio de San Juan de Letran, which the Dominicans ran for boys of the Philippines and the missions. After three years of study he entered the Order of Preachers. He made his profession in 1753 and took the religious name Vincent of Peace, Vicente de la Paz. He was ordained a priest in 1758.

Missionary in Tonkin

He sailed home and reached Trung Linh on January 20, 1759. Santi e Beati, drawing on the Vietnamese accounts, tells that he first taught at the seminary of Trung Linh and then went out to preach in the villages, serving parishes at Quat Lam, Luc Thuy, Trung Le, Trung Linh and Trung Lao. Lord Trinh Sam, who ruled the north from 1767, persecuted the Christians, and the missionaries worked in hiding. A letter of Vincent's that the same account quotes asks his superiors to pray "that God make me better and help me accept difficulties as the will of God."

Arrest and martyrdom

On the feast of the Holy Rosary in October 1773, while Vincent was celebrating the feast in the village of Luong Dong, he was betrayed and arrested with two young helpers. He was beaten and held for twelve days. In prison he met Fr. Jacinto Castañeda, a Spanish Dominican, who had been taken earlier, and the two priests were brought to the capital.

There, according to the account Santi e Beati gives, Lord Trinh Sam held a three-day debate among the four religions of the land, with Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist teachers and the two priests. He put three questions: where man comes from, what life is for, and what happens after death. The priests answered with courtesy and conviction. The lord was impressed, but he did not change the law, and the queen mother pressed for their deaths.

On November 7, 1773, the two priests were led out to be beheaded. On the way, an official offered to spare Vincent because he was Vietnamese. He refused. His words, as Santi e Beati gives them, were: "Whatever reason Fr. Gia is executed for, I should be executed for the same reasons. I am Vietnamese, so I ought to keep the laws more than he does." The two priests prayed the Creed and prayers to the Virgin Mary together and died side by side. Christians carried away their bodies and buried them at Trung Linh.

Beatification and canonization

Pope Pius X beatified Vincent and Jacinto on May 20, 1906, with other martyrs of Tonkin. The card printed for that occasion, shown below, places Pius X above a wreath of the new blessed. Pope John Paul II canonized them on June 19, 1988, among the 117 martyrs of Vietnam. Martyrs do not need a miracle to be beatified; the Church's judgment rests on the fact of their death for the faith. No miracles are told of Vincent in the sources we have, approved or otherwise.

Symbols of St. Vicente Liem in art

St. Vicente Liem is painted in the Dominican habit, a white tunic and scapular with a black cape. He holds the palm of martyrdom, and often a rosary, a sign of his order and of the feast on which he was arrested. Some images add a sword for his beheading or a book for his teaching. He is often painted together with St. Jacinto Castañeda, two Dominicans side by side, one Vietnamese and one Spanish. In Manila, Letran remembers him as one of its own; a dormitory there bears his name.

Feast day and where he is honored

We keep the feast of St. Vicente Liem de la Paz on November 7, with St. Jacinto Castañeda, and on November 24 with St. Andrew Dung-Lac and all the martyrs of Vietnam. Catholics in Vietnam honor him in his native Tra Lu and at Trung Linh, where he was buried, and he is a patron of the Colegio de San Juan de Letran in Manila. See our feast day calendar for other saints of November.

Prayer to St. Vicente Liem de la Paz

The Church prays for him in the Mass and Office of St. Andrew Dung-Lac and companions on November 24. We have not found a traditional prayer to him alone with a source we can cite, so we do not print one here.

Let us ask St. Vicente Liem to pray for the Church in Vietnam, for Catholic students and teachers, for Dominican friars and for all who are asked to deny Christ to save their lives. St. Vicente Liem de la Paz, pray for us.