August Chapdelaine

Born on January 6, 1814, in La Rochelle-Normande (Manche), Auguste Chapdelaine was ordained a priest in 1843. After serving as a curate, he joined the Paris Foreign Missions Society in 1851. He departed for China in 1852, working in Guangxi province. In February 1856, he was arrested, imprisoned, and tortured with extreme cruelty by local authorities during a period of anti-Christian persecution. Beaten with three hundred strokes of a rattan cane and then shut in a narrow cage, he was beheaded on February 29, 1856. He was beatified in 1900 and canonized by Pope John Paul II on October 1, 2000, among the 120 Martyrs of China.