STORIES OF THE SAINTS — Episode 5 | Saint Anê Lê Thị Thành

Welcome back to "Stories of the Saints — His Story, Her Story." Episode 5 tells the story of Saint Anê Lê Thị Thành, a mother among the martyrs, feast day July 12, whose root was Bái Điền, in Thanh Hóa, northern Vietnam. The root: born about 1781 into a Christian family, she married at seventeen to a Christian man of her village and raised six children in an ordinary Vietnamese Christian home of rice, prayer, and children, a house that was also a hiding place for hunted priests. The trunk: through the long persecution years under Emperor Minh Mệnh and then Emperor Thiệu Trị, her door stayed open; in 1841 she was arrested for sheltering a priest, beaten repeatedly, and imprisoned at Ninh Bình. Her husband, whose name the record does not preserve, urged her to think of the children and win her freedom; she held fast. To her youngest daughter, weeping at her bloodied clothes, she said the words Vietnamese mothers still repeat: "Do not cry. These are my red roses" (from the accounts of her passion, told in that graded form, exactly as our series promises: fact as fact, tradition named). She died in prison on July 12, 1841. The fruit: beatified May 2, 1909 by Pope Pius X; canonized June 19, 1988 by Saint John Paul II with the 117 martyrs of Vietnam — eight bishops, fifty priests, and fifty-nine lay men and women, ninety-six Vietnamese and twenty-one foreign missionaries — among whom she is the only laywoman, a mother of six. She is the patroness and model of Vietnamese Catholic mothers; her feasts are July 12, her own, and November 24, with the 117. Her word to carry: "A mother's love can be stronger than fear." And if we have missed a name — a saint of your village, your family, or your homeland — please let us know in the comments or a message to our page. We want to hear their names and their stories too. With her story, the first five stories of our road stand together: Francis, Thérèse, Nicholas, Kateri, and Anê. The road goes on, and it belongs to all of us. Producer: Tiên Phạm Narrator: Muse The original lives only on this channel.