Saint Peter Chanel, Missionary and Martyr

April 28

Spiritual Bouquet: All things are possible to him who believes. St. Mark 9:22

SAINT PETER CHANEL
Missionary and Martyr
(1803-1841)

Born in 1803 in the diocese of Belley in France, Peter was the fifth child of his parents; with his older brothers and sisters he was consecrated to the Blessed Virgin at his birth. They were all pious children who prayed and tried to help one another to serve God ever more faithfully. In 1814 the parish priest, seeing Peter’s good dispositions, arranged for him to study in the town of Cras, and to reside there with his aunt. During the summer the young Christian returned to watch the sheep and continue reading his cherished books in the fields. He began to serve Mass and learned the elements of Latin, and accompanied the priest when he went to take the Blessed Sacrament to the sick and dying. At the age of fifteen Peter passed through a temptation to abandon his studies and return home; a prayer to the Blessed Virgin saved his future vocation. The following year he was sent to the diocesan seminary; three years there left with his fellow candidates unforgettable memories of the pious seminarian.

He was ordained in 1827 and named assistant in the parish of Amberieu; at the end of a year there his delicate health caused the bishop to send him as parish priest to a more favorable climate in the mountains of Switzerland, where he hoped the young priest would also reform the parish. Saint Peter manifested great solicitude for the poor and the small children, for their instruction making an appeal to his younger sister Mary Frances, then twenty years old. While at Crozet he heard of the newly founded missionary Society of Mary at Lyons. He had always wanted to be a missionary, and believed the call he felt to join this Society was from God. He left his parish, keeping his parishioners in his heart forever, as he said, and at 28 years of age went to Father Colin, Founder of the Marists, and asked permission to enter the Society. Many and varied duties followed for him; in 1834 he became director of the Seminary of Belley. Resigned to remaining in France if God so willed, he nonetheless cherished a hope he would be sent to Oceania, the special mission field entrusted to the Society of Mary by Gregory XVI when he approved the Society in 1836.

In September of that year he was among the first twenty Marists to depart for the Pacific Ocean by way of the Cape of South America, for the Panama Canal did not yet exist. The ship and passengers were severely tried by more than one violent tempest, and saved, it seemed, only by prayer to the Star of the Sea, Mary, refuge of sailors. Damage to their ship occasioned long delays.

When they reached the Wallis Islands several missionaries were received kindly at the first debarkation. Others, among them Peter Chanel, continued on to Futuna, a volcanic island. There Father Chanel and Brother Marie-Nizier remained, welcomed by the local king of the Polynesian race. The natives already believed in a future immortal life, and the king Niouliki had forbidden cannibalism, but many superstitions still reigned. The two missionaries soon gained the confidence of the natives, learned the language and undertook serious labors to catechize them. The king came to Mass one day, and others followed.

One day the king allowed his idols to be thrown into the fire, and the entire population seemed about to become Christian; however, this tribal chief was still under the empire of the father of lies. During a war with an enemy faction, he found a reason to claim that his gods had battled with him to win the victory. An undercover persecution was brewing for the missionaries, with the pretext they were hindering the influence of the king. One day his envoys arrived at the mission, and it was not long before they had slain the Saint with rude instruments. Brother Marie-Nizier escaped the fate of his superior, having been absent that day. Later it was said that the sky immediately grew dark and a luminous cross was seen amid the thunderclaps that followed. Saint Peter’s frightened enemies buried his body in haste.

The sacred remains of the martyr were later exhumed and taken to New Zealand, and from there sent in 1851 to Lyons, to the Marist mother house. The entire island of Futuna converted to the faith; Saint Peter Chanel was canonized in 1954 by Pope Pius XII.

Source: Saint Pierre Chanel, premier martyr d’Océanie, by Marie-André (Ed. Eise: Lyons, 1957).

Catholic Online Saints

St. Peter Chanel

Feastday: April 28

1841

In St. Peter Chanel, Priest and Martyr (Feast day - April 28) The protomartyr of the South Seas, St. Peter Chanel was born in 1803 at Clet in the diocese of Belley, France. His intelligence and simple piety brought him to the attention of the local priest, Father Trompier, who saw to his elementary education. Entering the diocesan Seminary, Peter won the affection and the esteem of both students and professors. After his ordination he found himself in a rundown country parish and completely revitalized it in the three year span that he remained there.

However, his mind was set on missionary work; so, in 1831, he joined the newly formed Society of Mary (Marists) which concentrated on missionary work at home and abroad. To his dismay, he was appointed to teach at the seminary at Belley and remained there for the next five years, diligently performing his duties.

In 1836, the Society was given the New Hebrides in the Pacific as a field for evangelization, and the jubilant St. Peter was appointed Superior of a little band of missionaries sent to proclaim the Faith to its inhabitants. On reaching their destination after an arduous ten month journey, the band split up and St. Peter went to the Island of Futuna accompanied by a laybrother and an English layman, Thomas Boog. They were at first well received by the pagans and their king Niuliki who had only recently forbidden canabalism. However, the king's jealousy and fear were aroused when the missionaries learned the language and gained the people's confidence; he realized the adoption of the Christian Faith would lead to the abolition of some of the prerogatives he enjoyed as both highpriest and sovereign.

Finally, when his own son expressed a desire to be baptized, the king's hatred erupted and he dispatched a group of his warriors to set upon the saintly head of the missionaries. Thus, on April 28, 1841, three years after his arrival, St. Peter was seized and clubbed to death by those he had come to save. And his death brought his work to completion - within five months the entire island was converted to Christianity.

Gruesome details from another site

Saint Peter Chanel, Priest & Martyr
Optional Memorial
April 28th

from the Vatican website

History:

Proto-martyr of Oceanica, born 1803. Ordained a priest in 1827, he went as curate to Ambérieux and later as pastor to Crozet. His desire to serve in the foreign missions drew him, in 1831, into the newly-founded Society of Mary which, having been formally approved, April 29, 1836, was entrusted with the evangelization of Occidental Oceanica. Chanel, after taking the three religious vows at the hands of Father Colin, founder and first superior of the Marists, embarked that same year for his distant mission under the leadership of Bishop Bataillon, and was sent to the island called Horn, or Allofatu, by geographers, and Futuna by the natives. War between rival tribes and the practice of cannibalism had reduced its population to a few thousands when Chanel landed on its shores. The religion he found there was a worship of terror offered to evil deities. Chanel labored faithfully amid the greatest hardships, learning the native language, attending the sick, baptizing the dying, and winning from all the name of "the man with the kind heart". Niuliki, the then ruler, showed first an amicable disposition towards the missionary and even declared him "taboo", or sacred and inviolable; but when he saw that his subjects were being drawn away from the idols into the white man's religion, he issued an edict against him to avert the movement towards Christianity. At that very time his son Meitala joined the missionary.

Musumusu, Niuliki's prime minister and an implacable enemy of Christianity, then concocted a plot with the petty chiefs against the Christians, which was carried out with great cruelty. At day-break, on April 28, 1841, the conspirators assembled together and, after wounding many neophytes whom they had surprised sleeping, proceeded to Chanel's hut. One shattered his arm and wounded his left temple with a war-club. Another struck him to the ground with a bayonet. A third beat him severely with a club. The missionary was uttering the while words of gentle resignation: "Malie fuai" (it is: well for me). Musumusu himself, enraged at the tardiness of death, split open the martyr's skull with an adze. The remains of the martyred missionary, hurriedly buried, were later claimed by M. Lavaux, commander of the French naval station of Tahiti, and taken to France on a government transport, 1842. The cause of the beatification of Father Chanel, introduced 1857, terminated by the Brief "Quemadmodum" of Nov.16, 1889. The solemnities took place the following day in the basilica of St. Peter, Rome. "Oceanicæ protomartyr" is the official title given Blessed Chanel by the Congregation of Rites in the decree declaring: "tuto procedi posse ad solemnem Ven. servi Dei P. M. Chanel beatificationem".

He was canonized in 1954 by Pope Pius XII.

(Principal source - Catholic Encyclopedia - 1913 edition)

American Cathlic's Saint of the Day

April 28, 2005

St. Peter Chanel

(1803-1841)

Anyone who has worked in loneliness, with great adaptation required and with little apparent success, will find a kindred spirit in Peter Chanel.

As a young priest he revived a parish in a "bad" district by the simple method of showing great devotion to the sick. Wanting to be a missionary, he joined the Society of Mary (Marists) at 28. Obediently, he taught in the seminary for five years. Then, as superior of seven Marists, he traveled to Western Oceania where he was entrusted with a vicariate. The bishop accompanying the missionaries left Peter and a brother on Futuna Island in the New Hebrides, promising to return in six months. The interval lasted five years.

Meanwhile he struggled with this new language and mastered it, making the difficult adjustment to life with whalers, traders and warring natives. Despite little apparent success and severe want, he maintained a serene and gentle spirit and endless patience and courage. A few natives had been baptized, a few more were being instructed. When the chieftain's son asked to be baptized, persecution by the chieftain reached a climax. Father Chanel was clubbed to death, his body cut to pieces.

Within two years after his death, the whole island became Catholic and has remained so. Peter Chanel is the first martyr of Oceania and its patron.

Comment:

Suffering for Christ means suffering because we are like Christ. Very often the opposition we meet is the result of our own selfishness or imprudence. We are not martyrs when we are "persecuted" by those who merely treat us as we treat them. A Christian martyr is one who, like Christ, is simply a witness to God's love, and brings out of human hearts the good or evil that is already there.

Quote:

"No one is a martyr for a conclusion, no one is a martyr for an opinion; it is faith that makes martyrs" (Cardinal Newman, Discourses to Mixed Congregations).

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