Saint Pierre Néron was born on September 21, 1818 in France into a humble and virtuous peasant family. He had to work hard tending livestock to help his parents, while also striving to find time for his studies.
With a passion for the missionary vocation, at age 19 he met with the parish priest to express his desire to dedicate his life to God. He then joined the Paris Foreign Missions Society and was ordained a priest on June 17, 1848. He was sent to evangelize in the Vicariate Apostolic of West Tonkin (northern Vietnam).
Arriving in Hanoi on March 28, 1849, Father Néron was given the Vietnamese name Bac. He was assigned to Ke Vinh to learn Vietnamese and carry out pastoral work in the Hanoi parish.
In 1854, Father Bac was tasked with teaching 150 seminarians at the Vinh Tri Seminary. Here he lived an exemplary life of austerity, fasting on Fridays. The following year, he took on the missionary work in the Son Tay region, which had the largest Catholic congregation in the vicariate with over 16,000 faithful.
As persecution intensified, Father Bac frequently moved between the mountainous parishes of Ta Xa and Yen Tap to avoid capture. On March 13, 1857, while celebrating Mass at the Convent of the Lovers of the Holy Cross in Ta Xa, he was surrounded and arrested by the district chief's soldiers after being denounced. He was beaten on the shins and bound for interrogation.
At the court on August 7, 1860, he continued to be questioned about the villages he had visited, the families who sheltered him, and the faithful who helped him escape, but he remained silent. The soldiers drove stakes into the ground and gave him 40 lashes, leaving him bruised.
During his 3 months of imprisonment, the judges tried to force him to admit to inciting rebellion against the court, but he affirmed he had only come to preach the good news. To prove his sincerity, he fasted for 21 days to the amazement of his guards and visiting faithful.
On November 3, 1860, Father Bac was taken to the execution grounds in Son Tay and beheaded. His remains were buried at the Bac Loc church.
The priest Pierre Néron-Bac was beatified on May 2, 1909 and canonized on June 19, 1988.