St Peter Chanel (1803-41) Marist missionary priest and martyr in Oceania
Youth
Pierre Louis Marie Chanel was born on July
12, 1803 in the area of Belley in the Rhône-Alpes region of France.
After training at minor and major seminaries he was ordained in 1827 and
spent a brief time as an assistant priest at Ambérieu, where he met
Claude Bret who was to become his friend and also one of the first
Marist Missionaries.
Early ministry
From an early age he had been
thinking about going on the foreign missions and his intention was
strengthened by letters that arrived at Ambérieu from a former curate,
then a missionary in India. Pierre applied to the bishop of Belley to go
to the missions, but was appointed instead for the next three years as
parish priest of Crozet, where his zeal and care for ths sick won the
hearts of the locals. During this time he heard of a group of diocesan
priests who were hopeful of starting a religious order to be dedicated
to Mary, the mother of Jesus.
Marist
In 1831, Pierre joined the forming
Society of Mary (Marists), who worked both on local and foreign
missions. He was appointed first as spiritual director at the Seminary
of Belley, where he stayed for five years. In 1833 he accompanied Fr
Jean-Claude Colin to Rome to seek papal approval of the growing Society.
Missionary to Oceania
In 1836 the Marists were
formally approved by Pope Gregory XVI and were asked to send
missionaries to the territory of the South West Pacific. Chanel,
professed a Marist on 24th September 1836, was made the superior of a
band of Marist missionaries that set out on 24th December from Le Havre.
They were accompanied by Bishop Jean Baptiste Pompallier who was to
become the first Bishop of New Zealand. Pompallier had been appointed by
Gregory XVI to care for the Vicariate Apostolic of Western Oceania.
Pompallier based himself in New Zealand from 1838 and became the first
Bishop of Auckland, New Zealand in 1848.
Journey
Their first port of call was the Canary
Islands. Crossing over to South America, his friend Fr Claude Bret died
at sea from a flu virus. By June they reached Valparaiso (where the
French Picpus Fathers who had care of the Vicariate of Eastern Oceania
had their base). By September they had reached Gambier, then
Tahiti where the group transferred to another ship and set sail for
Tonga. before first dropping two missionaries at Uvea (also named
Wallis), the mainseat of the mission. Pierre Chanel went to neighbouring
Futuna Island, accompanied by a French laybrother Marie-Nizier Delorme.
They arrived on 8 November 1837 with an English Protestant layman named
Thomas Boag who had been resident on the island and had joined them at
Tonga seeking passage to Futuna.
Martyrdom
The group was initially well received
by the island's king, Niuliki. Once the missionaries learned the local
language and began preaching directly to the people, the king grew
uneasy, suspecting that Christianity would take away his prerogatives as
high priest and king. When his own son, Meitala, sought to be baptized,
the king sent a favoured warrior, his son-in-law, Musumusu, to "do
whatever was necessary" to resolve the problem. Musumusu initially went
to Meitala and the two fought. Musumusu, injured in the fracas, went to
Chanel feigning need of medical attention. While Chanel tended him a
group of others ransacked his house. Musumusu took an axe and clubbed
Chanel on the head. Peter Chanel died that day, April 28, 1841.
Remains returned to New Zealand and France
News of his death took months to reach the outside world and almost a year before Marists in France learned of it. Bishop
Pompallier, upon hearing of the death about six months later, arranged
for a French naval corvette L’Allier, commanded by the Comte du Bouzet,
to accompany the Mission schooner Sancta Maria and sail on 19 November
for Wallis and Futuna Islands, taking with him Fr. Philippe Viard. The
two vessels arrived at Uvea (Wallis) on 30 December 1841. They were able
to locate and identify his remains, which were brought first to New
Zealand in 1842 and eventually in 1850 to the Mother House of the
Society of Mary in Lyon.
Veneration and canonisation
Eventually most on
the island, including the chief Musumusu converted to Catholicism.
Chanel was declared a martyr and beatified in 1889. He was canonised in
1954 by Pope Pius XII. His feast day in the Catholic Church is 28th
April. The relics were returned to Futuna in 1977.
St Louis-Marie Grignion 1673-1716
Montfort, a Breton village
Louis Marie Grignion was born in the hamlet of Montfort, a Breton village about thirteen miles east of Rennes, on 31 January 1673. Later, as an itinerant preacher, he preferred to drop his surname and be called simply Louis Marie de Montfort, or le Pére de Montfort, the Father from Montfort. The second of eighteen children, Louis was one of the few who survived to adulthood. He was born into a family of deep Catholic faith, in an area of France renowned for its dynamic Christian life.
Jesuit education
At the age of eleven, Louis Marie set out for Rennes, the capital of Brittany, to enroll in the Jesuit College of Thomas à Becket. The young student from Montfort was considered by his teachers to be intelligent, religious, artistic in nature and somewhat shy. It was under the guidance of the Jesuits that Louis's priestly vocation matured. The decision to enter the priesthood was made, so he tells us, at the Shrine of Our Lady in the Carmelite Church in Rennes. After eight years at the Jesuit College, Louis Marie decided to pursue his theological studies at Saint Sulpice in Paris. At the age of nineteen, a new chapter opened in his life. The young man bade farewell to family and friends at the bridge of Cess on the outskirts of Rennes.
Studies in Paris
Having
left all, he crossed the Cesson bridge to a new life of total
dependence upon Divine Providence. So convinced was he that God was
truly his loving Father that he gave his money, baggage and clothes to
the first beggars he met. Begging for food and shelter along the way, he
walked to Paris, arriving in the rags of a mendicant. For the first two years,
Montfort attended classes at the Sorbonne. The following six years of
theological study, however, were spent under the tutelage of the
Sulpicians themselves. Like the Jesuits, they found the student from
Montfort to be a talented man of deep faith, intensely studious and
strongly devoted to Our Lady. He was notable for the practical love he
showed for the poor, for his desire to serve the outcasts of Paris society, and for a determination to live the gospel by identifying with the most neglected. All his life, but especially as a
seminarian, Montfort was an avid reader, and thoroughly enjoyed his
task as librarian at Saint Sulpice. Above all else, he was a man of the
Bible. The Sacred Scriptures were his constant companion, and his
sermons and writings - five major works in all - abound with biblical
texts. Louis yearned to proclaim the Good News of God's love to the
outcasts, to assure them of the love of Jesus and of the maternal care
of Mary.
First Mass
At the Lady Chapel in the parish church of Saint Sulpice, Father Louis Marie Grignion celebrated his first Mass on 5 June 1700.
From the age of eleven, he had completed sixteen years of formal study
to reach this goal. Yet Montfort's priestly ministry itself would last
only a further sixteen years. After a few years of preaching parish renewals and ministering to the destitute at the poor-house at Poitiers,
Louis Mary was far from settled. He found it extremely difficult to
discover how to implement his belief that God was calling him to serve
the poor and to identify with them.
Meeting the Pope
His solution was simple. This unknown young priest from western France would seek the advice of the Pope. And so he set out on foot from Poitiers, begging for food and shelter along the arduous and dangerous routes to the Holy City. In June 1706, Montfort met with
Clement XI, pouring out his heart to the Vicar of Christ. Strangely, the
Holy Father clearly saw in this young priest extraordinary gifts of
God. He turned down Louis Marie's offer to proclaim the gospel in the
wilds of Canada or in the Far East. Rather, the Pope named him Apostolic Missionary, telling him to return to his native land and renew the Church there. He spent the rest of his life
conducting approximately two hundred missions and retreats throughout
the villages and towns of western France, proclaiming the gospel of God's love with Spirit-filled power.
Mixed reaction
His
bold, charismatic proclamation of God's love was heard in churches,
barracks, poor-houses, and even in houses of prostitution. His preaching
was a source of admiration for many, of resentment and, sadly, anger
for others. Montfort's life-style as a poor,
vagabond preacher, with a knapsack strung across his shoulder to carry
his Bible, breviary and notebooks, was not considered dignified for a
cleric. Several times the episcopal authorities forbade him to preach in
one diocese or another. Always obedient, Montfort would move on.
With utter disdain for human
respect, this saintly man identified with the poor, and found his
greatest joy in opening for them the Word of God and offering them
whatever material help he could locate. Typical of his actions was the
event recorded in Dinan - probably one of many similar acts on his part -
when the missionary tenderly embraced a dying, leprous beggar lying in
the street, and carried him to a nearby religious house, crying out to
the doorkeeper: 'Open up to Jesus Christ!' To the majority of the people,
Father Louis Marie was simply the Good Father from Montfort. At times he
was named the Father with the Big Rosary, for he ordinarily had a large
rosary attached to the cord-like belt of his cassock.
Attracting thousands
His
preaching, flowing from his own experience of God's love and Mary's
maternal care, attracted thousands back to the faith. In a Jansenistic
age which harshly stressed the distance between God and his people, he
recommended even daily communion, a tender devotion to the Mother of
God, and a total surrender to Jesus in Mary. Because of the style and
contents of his preaching, this Elijah-like prophet was regarded by
quite a few as no more than a strange misfit. He was poisoned on one
occasion and, although it did not prove fatal, it caused his health to
deteriorate even more rapidly. Other attempts were made on his life, yet
Montfort was not deterred. His writings call for a loving,
formal acceptance of who we truly are: the slaves of Jesus Christ. The
term 'slave' always had, for Montfort, the evangelical connotation that
we belong to the Lord, that we are loved by him, and that we are
redeemed by the Incarnation and total offering of the Incarnate Wisdom
for us.