Daily Martyrology for September 20

Between 1839 and 1867, Sts. Andrew Kim, Paul Chong, and companions, martyrs of Korea. A Korean named Yi Sung-hun was baptized in China in 1784 by a French missionary, and returned to found the first Catholic community in Korea in the house of Kim Bom-u. The next year the government dispersed the community and arrested, tortured and exiled Kim Bom-u, who died shortly afterwards. Between 1791 and 1831 the numbers of Catholics increased, but hundreds were martyred. French missionaries arrived in Korea in 1837. Persecution was intense until a treaty with France in 1886. There were further persecutions in 1905 and more recently in North Korea, where the church is still underground.

In 311, St. Methodius of Olympus, bishop and martyr, who left behind works called On the Resurrection and The Banquet of the Ten Virgins.

In 1534, near London, Blessed Thomas Johnson, one of ten Carthusians who were starved to death because they would not recognize the king as head of the church.

In 1904, in Puebla de los Angeles in Mexico, St. José María de Yermo y Parres. He was ordained for the diocese of Léon in 1879. When he came upon some pigs devouring two abandoned newborn babies, he started an order called the Servants of the Sacred Heart and of the Poor dedicated to helping the poor, especially young women. Shortly before his death he began a mission among the Tarahumara Indians in northern Mexico.

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Our daily martyrology was written by Fr. Hugh Feiss, OSB. Copyright © 2008 by the Monastery of the Ascension, Jerome, ID 83338.