Filipino Catholics have a special relationship with St. Lorenzo Ruiz in part because of his fidelity and heroic defense of his faith but also because he was martyred outside of the Philippines, Washington Auxiliary Bishop Evelio Menjivar told a congregation gathered at the Shrine of St. Jude in Rockville, Maryland, on Sept. 23.

After all, a substantial number of Filipinos leave their Asian country to work in distant lands, including Australia, Canada, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States, sending money back home to support their families, forming an important component of the nation’s economy. In some Arab countries, Filipino and Indian workers make up the bulk of the Catholic presence in those majority Muslim lands, Bishop Menjivar said, so without them, there would not likely be a Catholic presence there. Filipinos use the term “Overseas Foreign Worker” or “OFW” to classify workers who leave the country to work in other countries.

Born in 1594 in Manila to a Filipino mother and a Chinese father who raised him Catholic, St. Lorenzo Ruiz was a married layperson with three children, when he was falsely accused of murdering a Spanish citizen in 1636, when the Philippines was a Spanish colony. 

The Dominican Friars believed in St. Lorenzo’s innocence, however, and they offered him asylum by sending him on a boat to Japan, where he was martyred in Nagasaki in 1637 during a persecution of Japanese Christians, after being hung upside down and refusing to renounce his Catholic faith.

“He’s an inspiration to us all,” said Luis M. Gorres, who attended the Mass, and also serves a deputy grand knight of the Knights of Columbus Council #12127 at St. John Neumann Parish in Gaithersburg. He noted that Filipinos have been migrating to the United States for more than 120 years.

The hour-long plus Mass on a rainy Saturday morning featured hymns in English, Latin, and Tagalog, a national language of the Philippines, with a congregation of about 250 people at the Shrine of St. Jude, a church where a monthly Sunday Mass in Tagalog is offered for the faithful. 

The Philippines is a nation where more than 80 percent of the populace identifies as Catholic, according to the Pew Research Center. According to a Pew survey, two-thirds of Filipinos in the United States consider themselves Catholic. 

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington has benefitted from the presence of Filipinos, as laity, clergy, and religious. Prince George’s County initially had the bulk of Filipinos living in the Washington area, with many settling in Mitchellville and Oxon Hill, in part because the Prince George’s County Public School system recruited Filipinos to teach there for a time, but the 2000 U.S. Census showed that more Filipinos live in Montgomery County than Prince George’s.

Among the clergy wearing the red vestments at the Mass were two concelebrating priests of Filipino descent who served for years as missionaries, seemingly emulating the country’s OFW ethos while also responding to the call to evangelize in distant lands. Father Andy Gonzalo worked as a missionary priest with a religious order in Congo before coming to the United States and being incardinated into the Archdiocese of Washington. He serves as pastor at Our Lady of Victory Parish in Washington, D.C. 

Father Rick Gancayco is a Filipino-American priest of the Archdiocese of Washington who served as a missionary in Honduras and is a priest in residence at Mother Seton Parish in Germantown. They were joined by Father Patrick Agustin, a Filipino-American parochial vicar at St. Martin’s Parish in Gaithersburg who was ordained as a priest for the archdiocese in 2020.

As Father Gancayco greeted parishioners from his previous priestly assignments after Mass, some of them followed a Filipino custom of holding the top of his right hand to their forehead, which is a sign of respect.

Before closing Mass with a prayer to St. Lorenzo Ruiz, Bishop Menjivar blessed sacramentals and holy objects of St. Lorenzo Ruiz, including statues and candles. Behind a bouquet of flowers, one statue of St. Lorenzo Ruiz was carried by four laymen into the luncheon reception after Mass at St. Jude’s parish hall.

The feast day of St. Lorenzo Ruiz is Sept. 28.