Giordano Ansalone

Giordano Ansaloni (Ansalone; Giordano di San Stefano) (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

Ansaloni was born at San Angelo 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.

Works

Whilst detained in Mexico, on his way to the Philippine Islands, he wrote in Latin a series of lives of Dominican saints after a similar work by Hernando del Castillo. He left at Manila an unfinished treatise on Chinese religion.

References

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Giordano Ansaloni". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. The entry cites:
  • QUÉTIF AND ECHARD, SS. Ord. Præd., II, 478:
  • ALVAREZ DEL MANZANO, Compendio de la reseña biográfica de los religiosos de la Provincia de Santisimo Rosario de Filipinas (Manila, 1896), 122 sqq.