A layperson of the young Korean Church, put to death at Seoul Prison in 1838 and canonized among the 103 Martyrs of Korea in 1984.

Saint Petrus Yi Ho-yŏng was a layperson of Korea’s persecuted Catholic community, martyred at Seoul Prison, South Korea in 1838 during the Gihae persecution. Korean Catholicism had grown up largely without resident priests after 1784 and repeatedly faced state execution for the crime of baptism. Petrus was beatified in 1925 and canonized by Pope John Paul II on 6 May 1984 in Seoul, together with 102 companions now honored as the 103 Martyrs of Korea.

Quick Facts

• Born: c. 1804 (Korea)
• Died: 1838-11-25 (Seoul Prison, South Korea)
• Feast Day: September 20 (with the Martyrs of Korea)
• Venerated as: One of the 103 Martyrs of Korea, layperson

Who Was Saint Petrus Yi Ho-yŏng?

Saint Petrus Yi Ho-yŏng was a Catholic of Korea, layperson, put to death at Seoul Prison, South Korea during the Gihae persecution. Korea’s Catholic community had grown up almost entirely without resident clergy after 1784, when Korean scholars first brought the faith home from Beijing and began baptizing one another; the Joseon state treated conversion as a capital offense against the Confucian social order, and Petrus was one of many ordinary believers who paid for that conviction with their life.

Historical Setting

The record places Petrus squarely within the Gihae persecution. Nineteenth-century Korea’s rulers viewed the growing Catholic community as a threat to the kingdom’s Confucian order and, after the 1801, 1839, 1846, and 1866 waves of arrests, thousands of believers were imprisoned, tortured to extract recantation, and executed by strangulation or beheading when they refused. Seoul Prison was one of the sites where this machinery of interrogation and execution operated, and it is there that the source register locates Petrus’s death in 1838.

Why the Church Remembers Saint Petrus Yi Ho-yŏng

The Church remembers Petrus as one of the ordinary faithful of the young Korean Church: a layperson who held to baptism rather than the formal renunciation that would have spared their life. Married and rooted in ordinary life, Petrus represents the many lay households that sustained Korean Catholicism underground for decades before it could worship openly. Together with the other 102 Martyrs of Korea, Petrus’s death is honored as part of the seed from which the modern Korean Catholic Church grew.

Canonization and Feast Day

Petrus was beatified in 1925 and, along with the rest of the group known collectively as the 103 Martyrs of Korea, was canonized by Pope John Paul II on 6 May 1984 during his visit to Seoul — the first canonization Mass a pope had ever celebrated outside Rome. The date and ceremony are well documented; nothing beyond the register’s death notice survives to describe Petrus’s life before arrest.

What Catholics Can Learn Today

Petrus’s witness is a plain one: ordinary faith, held under pressure that could have been escaped with a single word of denial. For Catholics today it is a reminder that fidelity is not reserved for the extraordinary — it was lived out by married laypeople, catechists, and even children in a persecuted Korean Church with almost no priests of its own for much of its early history.

A Prayer to Saint Petrus Yi Ho-yŏng

Saint Petrus Yi Ho-yŏng, you held fast to the faith you received even to the point of death. Obtain for us the courage to remain faithful when fidelity costs something, and pray for the Church in Korea that first bore witness in you. Amen.

Sources

• Roman Martyrology
• Butler’s Lives of the Saints
• Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Korea, materials on the 103 Martyrs of Korea