Bible Flares › Saints › Lawrence Ruiz and Companions
Feast day · September 28
c. 1600 in Binondo, Manila, Philippines – 29 September 1637 in Nagasaki, Japan
Born to a Chinese father and a Tagalog mother in Spanish Manila, Lorenzo Ruiz was a husband, father, and parish calligrapher who lived an ordinary life of quiet Christian piety. Fleeing an unjust legal accusation in 1636, he joined a Dominican missionary voyage that unwittingly landed in Tokugawa Japan during the peak of its anti-Christian persecutions. Subjected to excruciating torture in Nagasaki, Lorenzo refused to renounce Christ, giving his life alongside fifteen Dominican priests, consecrated women, and fellow laymen.
Lorenzo Ruiz grew up in the bustling quarter of Binondo in Manila, born to a Chinese father and a Tagalog mother who raised him in the Catholic faith. Educated by the Dominican friars at the Church of the Holy Rosary, he became an altar server, a skilled calligrapher, and an escribano, drafting legal documents and parish records. Lorenzo entered Holy Matrimony with a Tagalog woman named Rosario, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. His early life exemplified the quiet sanctity of Christian marriage and regular labor, rooted in the Confraternity of the Most Holy Rosary, where he developed a deep Marian devotion.
In 1636, Lorenzo was unjustly implicated in a violent altercation involving a Spaniard in Manila. Fearing execution or severe imprisonment under Spanish colonial justice, he sought sanctuary with his Dominican mentors. Three Dominican priests—Antonio Gonzalez, Guillermo Courtet, and Miguel de Aozaraza—along with a Japanese priest, Vicente Shiwozuka, and a layman named Lazaro of Kyoto, were secretly preparing an evangelical mission to Japan, where the Tokugawa Shogunate had outlawed Christianity under penalty of death. Lorenzo boarded their vessel, believing he was merely seeking exile in Macau, only to discover at sea that the expedition was sailing directly into the heart of the Japanese persecution.
The missionaries landed at Okinawa in June 1636 and were promptly arrested, transferred to Nagasaki, and hauled before the magistrates. The Tokugawa authorities sought not merely bodies to execute, but souls to break through public apostasy. Lorenzo was subjected to horrific torments, including the water torture and the driving of sharp bamboo needles beneath his fingernails. Under the agony, he briefly asked his captors if renouncing the faith would spare his life, but grace swiftly arrested the temptation; strengthened by the Dominican friars beside him, Lorenzo recovered his fortitude and proclaimed his unwavering adherence to Jesus Christ.
On 27 September 1637, Lorenzo and his companions were brought to Nishizaka Hill in Nagasaki, the site of numerous Christian martyrdoms. They were subjected to tsurushi, the torture of the pit: suspended upside down over a foul cavity, tightly bound to slow circulation, with slight incisions carved near their temples so that bleeding prevented immediate death while extending their agony. In the midst of this darkness, Lorenzo confessed his faith before the magistrates, declaring that he would gladly surrender a thousand lives for God. He died from suffocation and blood loss on 29 September, after which his body was burned and the ashes cast into the sea to prevent Christian veneration.
The testimony of Lorenzo and his fifteen companions was carefully preserved in Dominican records and eyewitness accounts from Japanese and Portuguese sources. On 18 February 1981, Pope John Paul II beatified the sixteen martyrs during an apostolic visit to Manila—the first beatification ceremony ever celebrated outside Rome. Canonized on 18 October 1987, Saint Lawrence Ruiz was elevated to the altars as the first Filipino saint. The liturgy remembers them on 28 September, pointing modern believers to a layman who found in Christ the courage to endure the loss of all worldly security for the kingdom of God.
The Philippines, Filipino youth, Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), Altar servers, Persecuted Christians
I am a Catholic and whole-heartedly do I accept death for God. Had I a thousand lives, all these to Him shall I offer.
Watch the short film in Bible Flares. Every saint of the day comes with a short film, the narration, and the verse that anchors the story.
Open in Bible Flares →