Manila's Chinatown spruces up for feast of Saint Lorenzo Ruiz

Chinese Filipino residents of Manila's Chinatown district started sprucing up Wednesday for the feast day of the country's first Chinese Filipino saint, Lorenzo Ruiz. The district's Binondo Church, where Lorenzo worked as a young layman, has been tidied up and decorated, while bands practiced playing for the feast day, which falls on Thursday. As early as Tuesday night, streamers from political figures and small flags have been hung near the church in preparation for the celebrations on Thursday. San Lorenzo, who chose to "die a thousand deaths" rather than renounce his faith, died a martyr along with 15 missionaries in Japan on Sept. 28, 1637. He was born in Manila's Binondo district in 1600, embraced the Catholic faith and got his education from the Dominican priests there. He served as altar boy, helper and clerk sacristan at the Binondo Church, which has been renamed the Basilica of San Lorenzo Ruiz in his honor. San Lorenzo was enjoying a married life with two sons and a daughter when circumstances forced him to leave the Philippines in 1636. Following a run-in with the Spanish authorities, he joined a group of missionaries bound for Japan to escape arrest and punishment. Once in Japan, where Christians were the subject of intense persecution, the authorities there arrested San Lorenzo and his companions and subjected them to torture. Lorenzo, however, persevered and openly told the Japanese authorities that he would not turn his back on his faith. "If I had a thousand lives, I would gladly give them to God," was his most famous line that also sealed his own death sentence. On Sept. 27, 1637, the Japanese left Lorenzo and his companions to hang upside down from gallows, the upper part of their bodies falling into a pit. Lorenzo endured the pain by praying and singing aloud, but succumbed to bleeding and suffocation on Sept. 28 after two days of agony. The Japanese authorities cremated his body and scattered his ashes into the sea. Lorenzo took his first step toward sainthood when Pope John Paul II beatified him during the Pope's Manila visit in February 1981. Also beatified were Lorenzo's companions -- priests Vicente Shiwozuka, Jacobo Kyushei, Domingo de Erquicia, Lucas del Espiritu Santo, Antonio Gonzales, Miguel Aozaraza, Guillermo Courtet, Jordan de San Esteban, Tomas Hioji; brothers Francisco Shoyemon, Mateo Kohoioye; laymen Miguel Kurobioye, Lazaro de Kyoto, Magdalena de Nagasaki and Maria de Omura. The late Pope John Paul II eventually canonized all of them on Oct. 18, 1987, according them the status of full sainthood. - GMANews.Tv