Blessed Cecilia Butsi

Cecilia Butsi (born December 16, 1924; died December 26, 1940) was a Thai martyr and a blessed of the Catholic Church. She was baptized in 1926 at the age of two. Between 1940 and 1944, Thailand was at war with French Indochina. During this period, foreign missionaries were expelled from Thailand, and local Catholics were forced to renounce their faith. On December 25, 1940, in Songkhon, local police gathered the Catholics and declared that they must either renounce their faith or die. Because Cecilia Butsi refused to renounce her faith, she was shot the following day along with two nuns (Agnes Phila and Lucia Khambang) and three other individuals (Agatha Phutta, Bibiana Khampai, and Maria Phon). All those shot on December 26, 1940, as well as the catechist and leader of the Christian community in Songkhon, Philip Siphong Onphitak, who was killed on December 16, 1940, in Mukdahan, were beatified by Pope John Paul II on October 22, 1989, as part of the group of the Seven Martyrs of Thailand.