Christianity emerged in Japan in the 16th and 17th centuries, thanks in large part to the evangelization of St. Francis Xavier. When the imperial powers felt threatened by the growing faith community, it cracked down on it with a series of persecutions. The Church remembers the Christians—both religious missionaries and lay faithful—who died in this persecution in three groups.

St. Paul Miki and 25 companions are remembered for giving their lives on February 5, and another group of martyrs is honored on June 1. Today, the Church recalls 205 martyrs, representative of perhaps thousands, many of whom were killed in a wave of persecution that climaxed on this date in 1622.

Religious and lay Christians were rounded up and imprisoned, some for four or five years, before their execution. We have the record of a letter from one Franciscan, Blessed Richard of St. Anne, to his home monastery in France:

“I have been for nearly a year in this wretched prison, where are with me nine religious of our order, eight Dominicans, and six Jesuits. The others are native Christians who have helped us in our ministry. Some have been here for five years. Our food is a little rice and water. The road to martyrdom has been paved for us by more than 300 martyrs, all Japanese, on whom all kinds of tortures were inflicted. As for us survivors, we also are all doomed to death. We religious and those who have helped us are to be burnt at a slow fire; the others will be beheaded… If my mother is still alive, I beg you to be so kind as to tell her of God’s mercy to me in allowing me to suffer and die for Him. I have no time left to write to her myself.”

Richard was burned to death, along with an 80-year-old Japanese woman, Blessed Lucy de Freitas, who supported the work of the Franciscans to help poor and persecuted. Richard had been found in her house.

Blessed Charles Spinola, an Italian, was among the Jesuits who were apprehended. He had been in Japan for 18 years and had advanced the study of mathematics and astronomy through his work there. On this date in 1622, he was taken with about 50 others to a hill outside of Nagasaki for their execution. Among them was Blessed Isabel Fernandez, who had sheltered Charles after he had baptized her son, now 4.

“Where is little Ignatius?” asked Charles.

“Here he is,” said Isabel. “I brought him with me to die for Christ before he is old enough to sin against him.”

The boy knelt for a blessing from Charles, witnessed the martyrdom of his mother, and was killed himself—all without crying out.

Charles and other priests were tied to stakes and large fires were built around them in a wide circle. The intention was to torture them with suffocating heat—when the flames got too close, they were suppressed. Charles was among those who died within a few hours, others lasted into the next day.

Blessed Charles Spinola and the martyrs of Nagasaki, you clung to faithfulness and met death without fear—pray for us!