Francis Serrano

Francis Serrano (Francisco Serrano Frías) was a Spanish Dominican missionary and Catholic martyr who died in China in the eighteenth century. He was born in 1695 in the town of Huéneja in the province of Granada, in southern Spain. Drawn to religious life, he entered the Order of Preachers, commonly known as the Dominicans, and completed his formation in Andalusia. After profession of vows and ordination to the priesthood, he offered himself for the foreign missions. The Dominican Province of the Holy Rosary, based in Manila and responsible for much of the order’s work in East Asia, recruited Spanish friars for the Philippines and China, and Serrano joined that missionary enterprise.

He was sent first in connection with the Philippine mission and then onward to Fujian province in China, where Dominicans had long maintained a difficult apostolate among local Christian communities. Qing policy toward Christianity in this period was inconsistent, swinging between limited tolerance and open repression. Serrano served as a missionary priest in that setting, ministering to Chinese Catholics and sharing the risks of an often clandestine ministry. The Fujian mission was headed by his fellow Dominican Pedro Sanz, vicar apostolic of the territory.

A sharp persecution of Christians broke out in Fujian in the mid-1740s, during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor. Serrano was arrested together with Bishop Sanz and the Dominican priests Joaquín Royo, Juan Alcober, and Francisco Díaz. While already a prisoner, he was named titular bishop of Tipasa and coadjutor to the vicar apostolic of Fujian; he was never consecrated because he remained in custody. Bishop Pedro Sanz was publicly beheaded in 1747. Serrano and the three remaining friars continued to be held in the prison at Fuzhou (then often called Foochow in Western sources).

On 28 October 1748 the four imprisoned Dominicans, including Francis Serrano, were put to death by strangulation in their cells in Fuzhou. Their martyrdom, together with that of Pedro Sanz, became a central episode in the memory of the Dominican mission in China. Pope Leo XIII beatified the five Dominican martyrs of Fujian on 14 May 1893. On 1 October 2000 Pope John Paul II canonized them along with 115 other martyrs associated with China, the group now known as Augustine Zhao Rong and Companions, or the 120 Martyr Saints of China. Their collective liturgical feast is celebrated on 9 July. Francis Serrano is thus honored as a saint of the Catholic Church, a Dominican missionary, and a bishop-elect who never occupied a cathedral see but died for the faith in Qing China.