Biography
John Đạt
About John Đạt
The surviving sources reviewed for John Đạt offer only a brief outline of his life. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Vietnam identifies him as a priest and places his birth in Đồng Chuối, Thanh Hóa. Its account gives his birth year as 1765. A secondary encyclopedia instead reports about 1764 but also gives an apparent impossible ordination year of 1758. Because the reports conflict and neither source provides a contemporary birth record, this draft leaves the birth date unknown rather than selecting one year.
The Vietnamese bishops’ account says that Đạt was beheaded at Chợ Rạ on October 28, 1798, during the reign of Cảnh Thịnh. The Holy See independently names “Juan Dat” as a priest and records the same date. Its formal list places Ioannes Dat among priests and separately lists Dominicus (Nicolaus) Dinh Dat among lay martyrs; this draft follows the priest matching the bishops’ death date. The sources do not establish further personal episodes, so this account does not infer his age, formation, ministry, arrest, words, or circumstances beyond the reported execution.
The bishops’ conference gives October 28 as his feast and reports that Pope Leo XIII beatified him on May 27, 1900. The Holy See includes Dat among the Vietnamese martyrs canonized by John Paul II on June 19, 1988. The reviewed evidence supports identifying him with this group but does not justify transferring biographical details from other Vietnamese martyrs who also bore the name John. The inherited May 8 Eastern Orthodox date corresponds in the cited Orthodox Church in America calendar to Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian, not John Đạt, so that unsupported association is removed from this draft’s structured record.
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