After praying the midday Angelus, Pope Leo recalled the testimony and beatification of Vietnamese priest François-Xavier Truong Buu Diep (1897–1946). He was beatified during a Mass celebrated by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle at the Tac Say Shrine on July 2.
The Pope said:
Last Thursday, July 2, Father Francis Xavier Tru’o’ng Bǚu was beatified at the Shrine of Tac Say in Vietnam. He was killed in 1946 in hatred of the faith (in odium fidei). Amid oppression and violence, he defended the rights of the people and did not abandon his parishioners. May his intercession and prayers strengthen all those who proclaim the Gospel in situations of persecution today.
Faithful to his flock to the end
Born in An Giang in the south of the country, François-Xavier Truong Buu Diep entered the seminary in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, run by the Paris Foreign Missions Society, and was ordained a priest there. Initially responsible for the pastoral care of Vietnamese migrants in Cambodia, he was subsequently appointed parish priest of Tac Say in southern Vietnam, where he served until his death in 1946. Despite the armistice signed a year earlier with Japan — which had occupied French Indochina during the war — his region fell victim to Japanese armed gangs who continued to wreak havoc.
Refusing the protection of the French so as not to abandon his flock, the priest was eventually captured by one of these gangs, whose members were affiliated with Caodaism, a local syncretic sect deeply hostile to Christians. He was then locked up in a house with his parishioners, and stood by them as they braced themselves for a massacre. The population was ultimately spared, but the priest, who had gone out to speak with his captors, was found dead. His body bore the marks of severe abuse.
