Bl. Francis Serrano October 20

 Bl. Francis Serrano

Feastday: October 20

Death: 1748

Dominican martyr of China. A Spaniard, Francis entered the Dominicans and was sent to Fukien, China. Arrested with Blessed Peter Sanze in 1746, Francis was elected titular bishop of Tipasa while in prison. He and his Dominican companions, including Francis Diaz, were strangled. He was beatified in 1893.

This article is about the Catholic martyrs of the Boxer Rebellion. For the Protestant martyrs, see China Martyrs of 1900. For other martyrs, see Chinese Martyrs.

The Martyr Saints of China, or Augustine Zhao Rong and his 119 companions, are saints of the Catholic Church. The 87 Chinese Catholics and 33 Western missionaries[1] from the mid-17th century to 1930 were martyred because of their ministry and, in some cases, for their refusal to apostatize.

Many died in the Boxer Rebellion, in which anti-colonial peasant rebels slaughtered 30,000 Chinese converts to Christianity along with missionaries and other foreigners.

In the ordinary form of the Latin Rite, they are remembered with an optional memorial on July 9.