Auguste Chapdelaine

Infobox Saint
name=Saint Auguste Chapdelaine
birth_date=1814
death_date=1856
feast_day=
venerated_in=


imagesize=250px
caption=Auguste Chapdelaine. Martyred in China in 1856.
birth_place=
death_place=
titles=Martyr
beatified_date=
beatified_place=
beatified_by=
canonized_date=1 October 2000
canonized_place=
canonized_by=John-Paul II
attributes=
patronage=
major_shrine=
suppressed_date=
issues=Father Auguste Chapdelaine (Chinese name: Ma Lai) (February 6, 1814 - February 29, 1856) was a French Christian missionary of the Paris Foreign Missions Society.

Biography

He was born in La Rochelle-Normande, France. He left France in 1852 to join the Catholic mission in the Guangxi province of China.

After a stay in Guangzhou, he moved to Guiyang, capital of the Guizhou province, in the spring of 1854. In December, he went, together with Lu Tingmei, to Yaoshan village, Xilin county of Guangxi, where he met the local Catholic community of around 300 people. He celebrated his first mass there on December 8, 1854. He was arrested and thrown into the Xilin county prison ten days after his arrival, and was released after sixteen or eighteen days of captivity.

Following personal threats, he went back to Guizhou in early 1855, and came back to Guangxi in December of the same year. He was denounced on February 22, 1856, by Bai San, a relative of a new convert, while the local tribunal was on holiday. He was arrested in Yaoshan, together with other Chinese Catholics, by orders of Zhang Mingfeng, the new local mandarin on February 25, 1856. He was severely beaten and locked into a small iron cage, which was hung at the gate of the jail. He was already dead when he was beheaded.

Opium War

Under French diplomatic pressure, the mandarin was later demoted. The death of Father Chapdelaine, the "Father Chapdelaine Incident", was used as the pretext for the French involvement, following Britain, in the Second Opium War (1856-1860). ["Religion Under Socialism in China" by Zhufeng Luo, Chu-feng Lo, Luo Zhufeng p.42: "France started the second Opium War under the pretext of the "Father Chapdelaine Incident." [http://books.google.com/books?id=cEfiZlUpI5oC&pg=PA42&dq=Chapdelaine+Incident&sig=ACfU3U3db79rYMbZPmvLXmQcniKmw4T9JA] ] ["Taiwan in Modern Times" by Paul Kwang Tsien Sih p.105: "The two incidents that eventually caused a war were the Arrow incident and the murder of the French Catholic priest, Abbe Auguste Chapdelaine"] ["A History of Christian Missions in China" p.273by Kenneth Scott Latourette: "A casus belli was found in an unfortunate incident which had occurred before the Arrow affair, the judicial murder of a French priest, Auguste Chapdelaine" [http://books.google.com/books?id=stdJAAAAMAAJ&q=Chapdelaine+Incident&dq=Chapdelaine+Incident&pgis=1] ]

The Chinese version of article 6 in the Sino-French Peking Convention, signed at the end of the war, gave Christians the right to spread their faith in China and to French missionaries to hold property.

Recognition and controversy

August Chapdelaine was beatified in 1900. He was canonized on October 1, 2000, by Pope John Paul II, together with 120 Christians martyrs who had died in China between the 17th and 20th century.

On October 3, 2000, Xinhua News Agency reacted to the canonization by issuing a press release, painting a very negative portrait of Father Chapdelaine.

Notes

External links

* [http://eglasie.mepasie.org/2000/septembre/chine/7_2000/dossier1_1/ Article about the Christian martyr saints of China, with biographies] (in French)
* [http://chapdelaine.8k.com/page2.html A biography of Father Chapdelaine] (in French)
* [http://www.china.org.cn/ddd/e-19.htm An article about the Xinhua press release]