A young Catalan Dominican priest beheaded in Vietnam in 1861 during a period of severe persecution of Christians there.

Pere Josep Almató i Ribera Auras was a Spanish Dominican priest from Catalonia, killed at Hải Dương, Vietnam, on November 1, 1861, at about thirty-one years old, during the Nguyễn dynasty’s persecution of Christianity, and was canonized in 1988 among the Vietnamese Martyrs.

Quick Facts

• Died: November 1, 1861, Hải Dương, Vietnam (about age 31)
• Venerated as: Priest and martyr
• Beatified: 1906
• Canonized: 1988

Who Was Saint Pere Josep Almató i Ribera Auras?

Pere Josep Almató i Ribera Auras was a Dominican friar from Catalonia who joined the order’s mission to Vietnam, ministering to the Catholic communities of Tonkin during a period when the Vietnamese imperial court, particularly under Emperor Tự Đức, treated Christianity as a foreign and subversive religion linked to European colonial ambitions.

Historical Setting

Nineteenth-century Vietnam saw repeated waves of anti-Christian edicts and executions, intensifying through the reign of Tự Đức, as the imperial court sought to root out a faith it associated with French political interference; missionaries and native Vietnamese Catholics alike, clergy and laity together, were executed by beheading, strangulation, or worse across these decades.

Why the Church Remembers Saint Pere Josep Almató i Ribera Auras

Pere Josep Almató is remembered as one of the many foreign missionaries who remained in Vietnam through this danger to serve Catholic communities there, ultimately captured and beheaded at Hải Dương in 1861, two years before the persecution began to ease under changed political circumstances.

Canonization and Feast Day

Pere Josep Almató was beatified in 1906 and canonized on June 19, 1988, by Pope John Paul II together with Saint Andrew Dũng-Lạc and the wider group of Vietnamese Martyrs. Their shared feast is kept on November 24.

What Catholics Can Learn Today

Almató’s death at only thirty-one, after choosing to remain in a mission field the imperial court had made explicitly deadly for Catholics, is a reminder that missionary commitment sometimes means accepting personal danger as simply part of the work, not an unforeseen exception to it.

A Prayer to Saint Pere Josep Almató i Ribera Auras

Saint Pere Josep Almató, young missionary beheaded for the faith in Vietnam, pray for missionaries serving today in places where the Gospel is still unwelcome, that they may serve with the same steady resolve you showed. Amen.

Sources

• Vatican.va, canonization homily of Pope John Paul II, June 19, 1988
• Roman Martyrology, November 24, Vietnamese Martyrs
• New Advent, Catholic Encyclopedia, “Tonkin”