Remembering the feast of Saint Lorenzo Ruiz, celebrated last Saturday, a priest-friend of mine casually remarked, “Lorenzo Ruiz impresses me as the accidental martyr-saint.”
I guess there is some truth to it: it was by accident that Lorenzo ended up in Japan together with Dominican missionaries, and was imprisoned with them for being Christian. That fortuitous event led the Chinese mestizo, aged 36 or 37, to his execution on September 29, 1637, on Nishizaki Hill in Nagasaki, a leading center of Christianity in Japan.