Peter Sanz

Peter Sanz, born Pedro Sanz y Jordá in 1680 in the Catalan town of Ascó in northeastern Spain, was a Dominican missionary bishop martyred in Qing-dynasty China. He entered the Order of Preachers in Catalonia in the late seventeenth century and was ordained a priest in the early eighteenth century. Drawn to the overseas missions of his order, he was sent first to the Spanish Philippines and then, around 1715, to the Dominican mission in Fujian province on the Chinese coast, where he spent the rest of his life.

In Fujian he served existing Christian communities at a time when the Qing court, after the Chinese Rites controversy and successive imperial edicts against Christianity, made open missionary work increasingly dangerous. He learned the local language and ministered largely in secret. In the late 1720s he was named vicar apostolic of Fujian and titular bishop of Adrasus, and he received episcopal consecration under clandestine conditions so that he could confirm the faithful and provide clergy for a Church under pressure.

A renewed persecution in the 1740s under the Qianlong emperor led to his arrest in 1746. Imprisoned at Fuzhou, he was interrogated and condemned as a teacher of a prohibited religion. On 26 May 1747 he was beheaded at Fuzhou. Several Dominican companions—Francisco Serrano, Juan Alcober, Joaquín Royo, and Francisco Díaz—were also imprisoned and were put to death in the following year. Their deaths formed part of a wider pattern of anti-Christian violence in eighteenth-century China.

Sanz and his companions were beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1893. On 1 October 2000 Pope John Paul II canonized them among the one hundred and twenty Martyrs of China. In Dominican and local calendars he is commemorated on 26 May, the anniversary of his execution; with the larger group of Chinese martyrs he is also remembered on 9 July. He is venerated as a missionary bishop and martyr of the Catholic Church in China.