A hundred and seventeen martyrs of a century of persecution, canonised together in 1988.
Between 1745 and 1862 successive Vietnamese dynasties saw Christianity as a foreign allegiance and pursued it in waves, above all under Minh Mạng and Tự Đức. Historians count the dead in tens of thousands; a hundred and seventeen were established through the processes, among them ninety-six Vietnamese, eleven Spanish missionaries and ten French. Andrew Dũng-Lạc, a priest born around 1795 into a poor and non-Christian family, had been bought out of poverty and taught by a catechist; arrested twice and once ransomed by his parishioners, he was beheaded at Hanoi in 1839. John Paul II canonised them together in 1988, and the memorial carries Dũng-Lạc's name for them all.
A group in Vietnamese tunics, palms and wooden cangues about their necks; the priest in a stole, a sabre raised above him.