Saint Jean Louis Bonnard Huong (1824 - 1852) - Vietnamese Martyr Saint

Saint Jean Louis Bonnard was born in a village of the city of Lyon, France in 1824. At the age of 22, he joined the Paris Foreign Missions Society (MEP) in Paris and became a missionary priest in the Vicariate Apostolic of West Tonkin, northern Vietnam, taking the Vietnamese name Huong.

In May 1850, Father Huong was instructed by Bishop Lefebvre to learn Vietnamese in order to preach. Afterwards, Bishop Lefebvre assigned Father Huong to take care of the parishes of Ke Bang and Ke Trinh. Bishop Lefebvre praised Father Huong as a virtuous, gentle, obedient, honest, humble and zealous man in his pastoral work.

In 1851, King Tu Duc issued a decree banning Catholicism. Seeing other priests being arrested for their faith, Father Huong greatly desired to suffer humiliation for the faith like them. During Lent in 1852, Father Huong was arrested along with 2 assistants right after celebrating Mass in Boi Xuyen village. The next morning, the district mandarin brought those arrested directly to Nam Dinh province.

The mandarin interrogated Father about his name, hometown, route to Vietnam and villages he had passed through. Father replied that even if he remembered, he would not say, as revealing it would harm the faithful. The mandarin repeatedly questioned and threatened to flog him, but Father calmly responded that he was not afraid of beatings, but would not do anything to harm the faithful. The mandarin pressured him to step on the cross to avoid execution, but Father firmly refused, stating he was not afraid to die and could not set a bad example for the faithful.

Father wrote a letter consoling his parents, advising them not to complain about his death for the faith and not to grieve. Father longed to suffer death for the faith.

On May 1, 1852, Father Huong was beheaded. At night, the mandarins threw his body into the river and left. Fishermen retrieved Father's body and head and brought them to Vinh Tri. The next day, Bishop Lefebvre had Father Huong buried in a garden in the presence of some priests and a few faithful.

The missionary priest Jean Louis Bonnard - Huong was beatified on May 27, 1900 and canonized a saint on June 19, 1988.