Enrico Battista Stanislao Verjus

At the end of 1884, Father Henri Verjus was sent as a missionary to New Guinea, a territory then considered extremely difficult and dangerous, where previous attempts at evangelization had failed. He arrived there in 1885. On July 2, 1885, he landed on the small island of Yule with two coadjutor brothers, Salvatore Gasbara and Nicola Marconi. He celebrated the first Mass there on Papuan soil, thus marking the foundation of the Catholic mission in this region.

Despite tropical fevers, the initial hostility of certain populations, and tensions with British colonial authorities and Protestant missions, Father Verjus deployed tireless apostolic activity. On January 28, 1889, he founded with Father Ferdinand Hartzer the first mission station on the mainland of New Guinea.

On May 10, 1889, he was appointed Vicar Apostolic of New Pomerania (present-day New Britain) and titular Bishop of Limyra. He was consecrated bishop on September 22, 1889, by Mgr Louis-André Navarre, m.s.c., in the chapel of the Yule mission. Shortly after, on February 10, 1890, he was appointed coadjutor to Mgr Navarre for the Apostolic Vicariate of New Guinea. In November 1890, showing great courage, he intervened alone and unarmed to pacify warring indigenous tribes.

Exhausted by privations, grueling manual labor, and a severe intestinal infection, he was forced to return to Europe in April 1892 for his ad limina visit and to collect funds. After a stop in Marseille, he went to his hometown of Oleggio to see his mother again. It was there that his health deteriorated definitively. He died on November 13, 1892, at the age of only 32.

The reputation of holiness of Bishop Henri Verjus, considered the "Apostle of the Papuans," spread rapidly after his early death, in Italy and France as well as in Oceania. To investigate his cause for beatification, no fewer than eleven diocesan, rogatory, and apostolic processes were opened between 1929 and 1937 in various dioceses around the world, notably in Novara (from March 12, 1929, to November 9, 1934), in Bourges (from 1929 to 1937), but also in Quebec, Annecy, Sydney, Port Moresby, Marseille, Nice, Paderborn, Roermond, and Rome. In total, ninety-two witnesses were heard to attest to the heroicity of his virtues and his missionary zeal.

The process of examining his heroic virtues continues in Rome under the direction of the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Causes of Saints. On March 3, 2016, Pope Francis received Cardinal Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Dicastery, in a private audience and authorized the promulgation of the decree recognizing the heroic virtues of Enrico Battista Stanislao Verjus. By this act, the young missionary bishop was officially declared Venerable. For him to be proclaimed Blessed, the official recognition of a miracle attributed to his intercession is required by the Church. To date, no miracle has yet been the subject of a decree of approval.

The spirituality of Bishop Henri Verjus is deeply rooted in the charism of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. He conceived his mission as a total configuration to Christ, accepting in advance the suffering, poverty, and sacrifice of his own life for the salvation of the souls of New Guinea. His devotion to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart was also central; he did not hesitate to entrust to her all the material and spiritual difficulties of his travels and his foundations.

In his intimate writings and his journal, he expressed a deep and unalterable joy in the midst of trials, emphasizing that true happiness does not depend on external circumstances but on the presence of the Kingdom of God within oneself. To facilitate evangelization, he also composed simple hymns in the local language (Roro).

Bishop Verjus rests in the Saints Peter and Paul parish church of Oleggio, in Italy. His tomb remains a place of memory and pilgrimage, visited in particular by delegations from the Church of Papua New Guinea, grateful to the one who laid the foundations of their Christian faith. His heroic journey also inspired, in a very free manner, the comic book character 'Odilon Verjus'.