St. Joachim Royo October 28

 St. Joachim Royo

Feastday: October 28

Death: 1748

Canonized: Pope John Paul II

Dominican martyr in China. A Spaniard, Joachim was sent to China with Blessed Peter Sanz and was ordained there. He was strangled to death in a prison after horrible atrocities. Pope Leo XIII beautified him 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.