Saint Augustine Zhao Rong, Priest, and Companions, Martyrs

This memorial honors one hundred and twenty martyrs who died in China between 1648 and 1930: eighty-seven Chinese Catholics, men, women and children, priests, catechists and lay people, and thirty-three missionaries from Europe. Many of them were killed during the Boxer Rising of 1900.

Augustine Zhao Rong was one of the soldiers who escorted the French missionary Gabriel-Taurin Dufresse, later a bishop, then a prisoner, to Beijing. Moved by his patience, he asked to be instructed, was baptized and later became a priest. Arrested in his turn, he was tortured and died in prison in 1815. The martyrs were canonized together by John Paul II on 1 October 2000.