Giordano Ansalone
Italian Dominican missionary in Asia
Giordano di San Stefano Ansalone, OP (1598 – 17 November 1634) was an Italian Dominican missionary in Asia. He is a Catholic martyr, beatified in 1981 and canonized in 1987 by Pope John Paul II.
Life
Ansalone was born at Santo Stefano Quisquina in Sicily. Having entered the Dominican Order and completed his studies at Salamanca, he was sent in 1625, together with many others, as a missionary to the Philippine Islands. Whilst serving as chaplain in a hospital for Chinese and Japanese at Manila he learned their languages.
In 1631, he offered to go to Japan and arrived at the outbreak of the persecution in 1632. Disguised as a bonze, he travelled over the land and administered the rites of the Catholic religion.
He was arrested 4 August 1634, and subjected to tortures that lasted seven days. He was forced to witness the beheading of his companion, Thomas of St. Hyacinth, and sixty-nine other Christians. On 18 November he was executed at Nagasaki, Japan, by being suspended till dead from a plank with his head buried in the ground.
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This entry incorporates text from “Giordano Ansalone” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.