ELK GROVE, CA (MPG) - Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Elk Grove will hold a Mass for St. Lorenzo Ruiz at 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 27.

Born in Manila in 1594, the young Catholic life of the half-Filipino and half-Chinese Lorenzo Ruiz seemed destined to be peaceful and ordinary. He worked as a church clerk and raised his children while normalcy filled his life.

Ruiz’s ordinary life flipped upside down when he was falsely accused of homicide. To evade arrest by Philippine authorities, he (along with missionaries) sailed to Japan. The shogunate caught them. It wanted the missionaries to leave Japan and unmake them as Christians. The group was jailed and tortured - like forcing water down their throats - to force them to abandon their Catholic faith.

Ruiz was hung upside down over a pit as pain filled his days. Despite the suffering, this ordinary man refused to abandon his faith as he voiced his last words: “I am a Catholic, and I wholeheartedly accept death for God. If I had a thousand lives, I would offer them all to Him.” 

While bleeding and suffocating, he died in the pit in 1637.

Ruiz was beatified in 1981 in Manila (the first beatification ceremony to be held outside the Vatican in history) and canonized six years later, making him the first Filipino saint. 

A mosaic of Ruiz is at The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (America’s Catholic Church) in Washington, D.C. 

Good Shepherd Catholic Church is at 9539 Racquet Court, Elk Grove.