Blessed Isidore Ngei Ko Lat (1918-1950)

May 1, 2024

By Columbia staff

May 1, 2024

Blessed Isidore Ngei Ko Lat

Poor health prevented Isidore Ngei Ko Lat from becoming a priest but could not stop him sharing the faith. His ministry as a catechist, which ended in martyrdom, contributed to what has been called a “flowering of Catholicism” in Burma (present-day Myanmar).

Ko Lat was born in 1918 in central Burma, then a British colony. His parents, farmers who were evangelized by priests from the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, died when Ko Lat was a teen, leaving him and a younger brother to live with an aunt.

He frequently assisted missionary priests and eventually entered a local seminary, where he excelled in theology, Latin and English. However, bronchial asthma forced him to return home to the village of Dorokhò. There, he opened a free school to teach children Burmese, English and religion — often using music to convey catechetical lessons.

In 1948, Ko Lat met Father Mario Vergara, a missionary with the pontifical institute. Father Vergara had only recently returned to Burma after being held, with other missionaries from Italy, in a British internment camp in India throughout World War II.

Ko Lat accepted the priest’s invitation to serve as a catechist and translator. Their efforts were successful but resented by Burmese Protestants who supported the rebel fighters in the country’s civil war.

On May 24, 1950, the two missionaries traveled to meet a local leader and request the release of an imprisoned catechist. Upon arrival, they were interrogated, dragged through the woods for six hours, and finally shot to death. Their bodies were thrown in the Salween River.

Beatified in 2014 together with Father Mario Vergara, Isidore Ngei Ko Lat is Myanmar’s first blessed.

Blessed Isidore Ngei Ko Lat (1918-1950)

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