Saint Lorenzo Ruiz

Lorenzo was born outside the walls of old Manila, in the suburb of Binondo, the son of a Chinese father and a Tagalog mother. ¹ Franciscan Media says both parents were Christians and that he learned Chinese and Tagalog from them and Spanish from the Dominicans. ⁴ The sources do not agree on the year: Vatican News gives 1594, and Franciscan Media heads its page with 1600. ³⁴

He was taught by the Dominicans in their school at Binondo and served in the parish church of Saint Gabriel there, as an altar boy and sacristan in Franciscan Media's account. ¹⁴ He was a full member of the Confraternity of the Holy Rosary. ⁴ For a living he became a calligrapher, copying documents in a fine hand. ³⁴

He married and had two sons and a daughter. ⁴ Vatican News gives his wife's name as Rosario and describes an ordinary Catholic family, content with its lot. ³

What changed his life was an accusation of killing someone, and almost nothing is known about it. Franciscan Media says the only record is a statement of two Dominicans; Vatican News says it is the journal of one Dominican priest. ³⁴ Both quote the same words: he "was sought by the authorities on account of a homicide" at which he was present "or which was attributed to him." ³⁴ Vatican News calls the charge false. ³

He took refuge with three Dominican priests who were about to sail for Japan, where Christians were under violent persecution: Antonio González, Guillaume Courtet (Guillermo in Vatican News and Franciscan Media) and Miguel de Aozaraza. ³⁴ With them went a Japanese priest, Vicente Shiwozuka de la Cruz, and a Japanese layman named Lazaro, a leper. ³⁴ The two accounts differ on what Lorenzo knew. Vatican News says he decided to go with them; Franciscan Media says he learned only once they were at sea that the ship was bound for Japan. ³⁴

They put in at Okinawa, and Franciscan Media records that he could have gone on to Formosa instead. ⁴ He gave his reason for staying in his own words: "I decided to stay with the Fathers, because the Spaniards would hang me there." ⁴

In Japan they were soon found, arrested and taken to Nagasaki. ⁴ Vatican News says the Tokugawa shogunate wanted more from the missionaries than their departure: it wanted them to renounce the faith. ³ It says the group was held for two years. ³

The torture is described in both accounts. Water was forced down their throats, then boards were laid across their stomachs and pressed down until the water burst out of mouth, nose and ears. ³⁴ Franciscan Media adds bamboo needles driven under the fingernails. ⁴ The superior, Father González, died after some days. ³⁴ Shiwozuka and Lazaro broke under it and came near to renouncing Christ, and were brought back by the others. ³⁴

Lorenzo had his own moment. During one session he asked the interpreter, "I would like to know if, by apostatizing, they will spare my life." ³⁴ The interpreter gave no clear answer. ³⁴ Both accounts say that in the hours after, his faith grew strong and he became bold, even audacious, with the men questioning him. ³⁴

The five who were left were hung head down in pits, tightly bound to slow the blood and prolong the dying, with boards around their waists weighted with stones. ³⁴ They hung for three days, and John Paul II says they sang psalms in prison and during the execution. ¹⁴ The sources place his profession differently. John Paul II says he told the court that he was a Christian and would give his life for God a thousand times; Vatican News says he spoke the words during that last trial. ¹³ John Paul II gives them in Tagalog, "Kahit maging sanglibo man / Ang buhay n'yaring katawan," and renders them: "Had I many thousands of lives I would offer them all for him. Never shall I apostatize. You may kill me if that is what you want. To die for God—such is my will." ¹ Vatican News has him say, "I am a Catholic, and I wholeheartedly accept death for God. If I had a thousand lives, I would offer them all to Him." ³

Lorenzo and Lazaro died in the pit. ³⁴ The three priests still alive were taken out and beheaded. ³⁴ When the news reached Manila, a Te Deum was sung in the church of Santo Domingo on the evening of December 27, 1637. ¹

Lorenzo is canonized with fifteen others, men and women martyred in and around Nagasaki between 1633 and 1637. ² John Paul II named the two men who led the group: Domingo Ibáñez de Erquicia, vicar provincial of the Japanese mission, from Régil in the Spanish Diocese of San Sebastián, and Jacobo Kyuhei Tomonaga, from Kyudetsu in the Diocese of Nagasaki. ¹ By his count the companions were nine priests, two professed brothers, two members of the Dominican Third Order, a catechist and a guide-interpreter; nine Japanese, four Spaniards, a Frenchman and an Italian. ¹ The canonization homily says the two Third Order members were young women, and that three of the sixteen were laymen engaged in catechesis, Lorenzo and two Japanese. ²

Both of those leaders belonged to the Dominican Province of the Holy Rosary, founded in the Philippines in 1587 for the mission to the Far East, and the Philippines was the place of immediate preparation for eleven of the sixteen. ¹² Four taught at the College of Santo Tomás in Manila, one as its rector, and a fifth had studied there. ¹

John Paul II quoted several of them. Before the judges at Nagasaki, Courtet summed up their purpose: "We have come to Japan only to preach faith in God and to teach salvation to little ones and to the innocent and to all the rest of the people." ¹ Miguel de Aozaraza, looking at Christ's wounds, cried out, "What beautiful carnations, what bloodred roses shed for love of you, my God!" ¹ He also named two of the women, Magdalena of Nagasaki and Marina of Omura. ¹ In the canonization homily he cited Father Lucas del Espíritu Santo, who wrote that the gift he valued most was to have been sent to that land in the company of such servants of God. ²

John Paul II beatified the sixteen at Luneta Park in Manila on February 18, 1981. ¹ He called Lorenzo the first beatus of the Philippine nation and compared him to Stephen: as the young church of Jerusalem gave the first martyr, so the church of Manila, founded in 1579, gave its first in Lorenzo. ¹ The theme of the papal visit, which he repeated in the homily, was "To die for the faith is a gift to some; to live the faith is a call for all." ¹

He canonized them in Saint Peter's Square on October 18, 1987, a Sunday kept as World Mission Day, while the Synod of Bishops was meeting on the vocation of the laity. ² In the English part of that homily he held Lorenzo up to Philippine families as a "husband and father of three children, who first collaborated with the Dominican Fathers in Manila, and then shared their martyrdom in Nagasaki, and who is now the first canonized Filipino saint." ²

None of the sources consulted names a patronage for Lorenzo Ruiz or for the sixteen as a group, so this page does not supply one. ¹²³⁴ At the canonization John Paul II asked instead that the work of evangelization begin in Philippine families, following Lorenzo's example. ²

Saint Lorenzo Ruiz and his companions are kept on September 28. ³⁴ On the calendar of the United States it is an optional memorial, under the English form of his name: Saint Lawrence Ruiz and Companions, Martyrs. ⁵ The sources do not agree on the day he died; Vatican News gives September 28 or 29, 1637, and Franciscan Media September 29 or 30. ³⁴

He did not set out to be a missionary. By every account he was a layman with a trade and a family, who left Manila under a charge the records barely describe, and whose reason for staying with the friars at Okinawa was that the Spaniards would hang him in Formosa. ³⁴ The sources leave that as it is, and so does this page.

His question to the interpreter is recorded alongside his last words, by both accounts. ³⁴ He asked whether apostasy would save his life, and got no clear answer. The courage came afterward, and Franciscan Media does not try to explain it, calling it "inexplainable in human terms." ⁴ Two of the men who died with him had broken under the torture and were brought back by the others. ³⁴

John Paul II read his profession as the completion of the catechesis he had received in the Dominicans' school in Binondo, and pointed to the parish and the family as the place where faith is lived and handed on. ¹ The theme of that visit says it plainly: to die for the faith is a gift to some, and to live it is a call for all. ¹