and prison guards respected him for his noble and dignified personality and conduct. He spent 10 years in prison, during which he endured the sufferings and pains of prison. He died in prison on 1 December 1814 at the age of 75. Yi Seong-rye (1801–1840): Mother who inherited faith to her children She was born in 1801 in Hongju, Chungcheong-do. She was from the family of Louis Gonzaga Yi Jon-chang. At the age of 17, she married St. Francis Choe Kyeong-hwan and lived in Darakgol, Hongju. In 1821 she gave birth to their first son, Thomas Choe Yang-up. Due to the danger of persecution the family had to move frequently but Yi Seong-rye told biblical stories to her children and taught them to endure difficulties and to be patient. After settling down in Surisan (currently Gunpo-city, Gyeonggi-do) she helped her husband to set up the Christian village. Meanwhile, her son Thomas Choe Yang-up was chosen to be a candidate for the seminarian and was sent to Macau to study theology. In 1839, during the Gihae persecution her husband went back and forth Hanyang (now Seoul) to take care of the bodies of the Martyrs, she supported her husband and finally was arrested by the police with her whole family in Surisan. She suffered painfully not because of the torture, but because of her maternal love for her new-born baby who was nearly starved to death due to lack of milk from his mother. Yi could no longer abandon her baby so she yielded to defy her faith and was released from prison. When her eldest son left to China to be a seminarian, she was imprisoned once again. When she was sentenced to death, with divine grace and prayers from her Catholic friends, she overcame all the temptation and was sent to Danggogae (now Wonhyoro 2-ga, Yongsan-gu, Seoul) to be beheaded at the age of 39. Legacy Pope John Paul II, speaking at the canonization, said, "The Korean Church is unique because it was founded entirely by lay people. This fledgling Church, so young and yet so strong in faith, withstood wave after wave of fierce persecution. Thus, in less than a century, it could boast of 10,000 martyrs. The death of these martyrs became the leaven of the Church and led to today's splendid flowering of the Church in Korea. Even today their undying spirit sustains the Christians in