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New Canadian bishop is descendant of martyr

CWN - January 14, 2010

Canada’s first Asian-born bishop is the great-great-grandson of a Vietnamese martyr who suffered drowning rather than renounce his faith. “The executioners tied him to a post in the river and waited for the tide to come up,” recounted 43-year-old Auxiliary Bishop Vincent Nguyen of Toronto, who received episcopal ordination on January 13. “The executioners very patiently would come over once in a while to see if he wanted to recant. His answer was consistently no and so he drowned. The emperor was afraid of these Christians who would not worship him.”

Braving pirates and the open sea, the future bishop fled Vietnam in 1984 when he was 16.

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