Jean-Gabriel Perboyre

Jean-Gabriel Perboyre embarked from Le Havre on March 24, 1835, and reached Macau the following August, after a five-month voyage. He then traveled to the interior of the country, where Christianity was proscribed and entry forbidden to Europeans. Assigned first to the province of Henan, then transferred around 1838 to that of Hubei, he exercised an itinerant and clandestine ministry in the service of local Catholic communities, learning the language, adopting Chinese dress, and sharing the precarious living conditions of the faithful. Persecution intensified at the end of the 1830s. In September 1839, at Chayuankou, Perboyre was denounced and handed over to the authorities by one of his catechumens for a sum of money. A long captivity then began, marked by successive interrogations in several cities and by torture: he was whipped, suspended by his hair and thumbs, burned, loaded with chains, and ordered to apostatize and trample on the cross, which he stubbornly refused. Condemned to death, he was strangled on September 11, 1840, in Wuchang (today part of Wuhan), tied to a post or a wooden frame in the shape of a cross.

The entire spiritual life of Jean-Gabriel Perboyre is permeated by an intense devotion to the Passion of Christ and by the explicit desire to resemble Him even in suffering. Before his departure for China, he wrote, according to Lazarist tradition: "I do not know what awaits me on the path that opens before me: undoubtedly the cross, which is the daily bread of the missionary. What better can we hope for, going to preach a crucified God?" His conduct during his captivity, where he refused to apostatize and to profane the crucifix despite the tortures, was very early understood as the fulfillment of this aspiration. The reputation of the missionary's holiness spread rapidly after his death, first within the Congregation of the Mission, then in the universal Church. As early as 1843, Pope Gregory XVI introduced his cause. Contemporaries highlighted the striking conformity of his Passion with that of Jesus: betrayed for money, judged before several tribunals, stripped and put to death on a piece of wood in the shape of a cross, he appeared as a living image of the suffering Savior.

The cause of Jean-Gabriel Perboyre was introduced as early as 1843 by Pope Gregory XVI. He was beatified in Rome on November 10, 1889, by Pope Leo XIII, thus becoming one of the first martyrs of China raised to the honors of the altar. More than a century later, Pope John Paul II canonized him on June 2, 1996, in Saint Peter's Square, making him the first canonized saint of China. In his homily, the Pope emphasized that the missionary, "reproducing the Passion of Jesus with an extraordinary resemblance, became like him in death, in death on a cross." His liturgical feast is celebrated on September 11, the anniversary of his martyrdom. The remains of the saint were brought back from China to France: his relics are venerated in the chapel of the motherhouse of the Lazarists, on Rue de Sèvres in Paris, in the same sanctuary that houses the body of Saint Vincent de Paul.

Jean-Gabriel Perboyre occupies a unique place in the missionary history of the Church: as the first canonized saint of China, he embodies the link between the tradition of Saint Vincent de Paul and the evangelization of the Far East. His figure is particularly honored within the Congregation of the Mission (Lazarists) and the Daughters of Charity, who see in him a model of apostolic zeal, humility, and total self-giving. His cult has spread far beyond France and China, carried by the Vincentian family present on every continent. His hometown of Montgesty, in the Lot, preserves his memory, and the seminary as well as the motherhouse of the Lazarists in Paris maintain his devotion around his relics. Invoked for missions, for priestly and missionary vocations, and as an intercessor for the Christians of China, he remains a symbol of fidelity in persecution. His martyrdom on a cross, near Wuhan, has experienced a contemporary resurgence in resonance, making him a spiritual reference for many faithful.