Saint Pedro Calungsod

Saint Pedro Calungsod was a young lay catechist from the Philippines. He accompanied the Jesuits on their mission to the Mariana Islands and was killed on the island of Guam together with Blessed Diego Luis de San Vitores. The Church commemorates both martyrs on April 2.

Little is known about his origins. He was born around 1654 in the Visayas, the central part of the Philippines. His birthplace is not certain, and several towns of the region regard him as their native son. As a boy he was trained by the Jesuits there for the service of a catechist.

In 1668, together with other young catechists, he set out with Father Diego Luis de San Vitores, a Spanish Jesuit, for the islands of the Pacific Ocean then called the Ladrones, the Islands of Thieves. In June of that year the missionaries settled on the island of Guam to proclaim the Gospel to the Chamorro people. They named the archipelago the Marianas, in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of Mariana, queen regent of Spain, the benefactress of the mission.

Life on the islands was hard. Supplies arrived irregularly, and destructive typhoons often struck the islands. Even so, many of the inhabitants received baptism. In time a Chinese healer named Choco began to spread the rumor that the water of baptism was poisonous. Because some of the children baptized when gravely ill had died, many believed him and abandoned the faith, and the missionaries began to be persecuted. Pedro went on teaching the catechism to the newly baptized.

On the morning of April 2, 1672, Pedro and Father Diego came to the village of Tomhom, today’s Tumon on the island of Guam. They learned that a baby girl had been born there and asked her father, Matapang, to let her be baptized. Matapang, formerly a Christian and a friend of the missionaries, angrily refused. In his absence, with the mother’s consent, the child was baptized. The enraged Matapang began hurling spears, first at Pedro; he was helped by Hirao, another villager, whom he had talked into the killing. Witnesses related that the agile boy could have fled but would not leave the priest alone. He had no weapon either, because Father Diego did not allow his companions to carry arms. Struck in the chest, he fell, and Hirao finished him off with a blow to the head. Father Diego managed to give him absolution before he himself was killed. Pedro is thought to have been about seventeen at the time.

The killers took the bodies of both martyrs out in a boat and sank them in the ocean; they were never recovered. His companions in the mission remembered Pedro as a zealous catechist and a faithful assistant who had persevered in the difficult mission for four years.

Father Diego Luis de San Vitores was beatified by John Paul II in 1985. On March 5, 2000, the same pope declared Pedro Calungsod blessed and held him up as a model for the young, especially in the Philippines. Benedict XVI canonized him on October 21, 2012, in Saint Peter’s Square in Rome.