Saint Peter Chanel

He was born at Cuet, in the Diocese of Belley in eastern France. ¹ The encyclopedia's two articles disagree by a year: Joseph Freri gives 1802, and J. P. Sollier gives 1803, as Franciscan Media also does. ¹³ Sollier says he came of humble parents and that a zealous priest, M. Trompier, helped with his education. ¹

Franciscan Media says his interest in the missions began at school, when he read letters sent home by missionaries. ³ Freri puts it more strongly: reading the letters of missionaries in far-away lands "inflamed his heart with zeal." ¹

He was ordained a priest in 1827. ¹ Sollier records that he was first a curate at Ambérieux and then pastor at Crozet. ¹ The Society of Mary in the USA says he served three years in parish work and was quickly recognized for his sincerity and holiness, and Franciscan Media says he revived a struggling parish by his care for the sick. ³⁴

In 1831 he joined the Society of Mary, the Marists, which was then newly founded. ¹⁴ The Society says that in 1833 he went with its founder, Father Jean-Claude Colin, to Rome to seek approval of the plan for the order. ⁴ Franciscan Media says he spent five years teaching in the seminary before he was sent abroad. ³

The Society was formally approved on 29 April 1836 and entrusted with the evangelization of the western Pacific, according to Sollier. ¹ Chanel took his vows at Colin's hands and sailed that same year, under the leadership of Bishop Bataillon as Sollier names him; Franciscan Media says he went as superior of a group of seven Marists. ¹³

His bishop assigned him to Futuna, an island geographers then called Horn, and he landed in November 1837. ¹ No Christian missionary had been there before him, Freri says. ¹ Franciscan Media says the bishop left him there with one brother and promised to come back in six months, and did not return for five years. ³

Sollier describes an island whose population had been brought down to a few thousand by wars between rival tribes, and a religion he calls a worship of terror offered to evil spirits. ¹ Franciscan Media adds whalers and traders to the warring islanders, and says he lived in severe want. ³

He learned the language, nursed the sick and baptized the dying. ¹ Sollier says the islanders came to call him "the man with the kind heart." ¹ Franciscan Media says that through it all he kept "a serene and gentle spirit, plus endless patience and courage," and that the results were modest: several baptisms, and others under instruction. ³

The ruler of the island was Niuliki, as Sollier spells him, or Niuluki in Freri's article, who was king and also, in Freri's word, pontiff of the island. ¹ Sollier says Niuliki was friendly at first and even declared the missionary taboo, sacred and not to be touched. ¹ When he saw his people drifting from the old gods toward the white man's religion, he turned and issued an edict against him. ¹

At that point his own son, Meitala, joined the missionary. ¹ Freri says it was the conversion of the king's son and daughter that exasperated him, and Franciscan Media says persecution grew worse when the chieftain's son asked for baptism. ¹³

The plot, as Sollier tells it, was the work of Musumusu, the king's chief minister and an implacable enemy of the new religion, who gathered the minor chiefs against the Christians. ¹ At daybreak on 28 April 1841 the conspirators fell on a number of converts as they slept, wounding many, and then went to Chanel's hut. ¹ He was struck down with clubs and a bayonet, and Musumusu finished him with an adze. ¹

While they beat him, Sollier says, he spoke only words of gentle resignation, "Malie fuai," which the encyclopedia translates as "it is well for me." ¹ Freri says he died without a word of complaint. ¹ His body was buried in haste; the next year the commander of the French naval station at Tahiti claimed the remains and had them carried back to France. ¹

Two Marist missionaries took up his work in 1842, and Freri writes that nowhere has the preaching of the Gospel produced more wonderful results. ¹ Franciscan Media says that within two years of his death the whole island had become Catholic and has stayed so. ³

His cause was introduced in 1857, the year Freri says Pius IX declared him Venerable. ¹ Leo XIII beatified him on November 17, 1889, the day after the brief Quemadmodum concluded the cause, in St. Peter's Basilica. ¹ The Congregation of Rites gave him the official title "Oceanicæ protomartyr," protomartyr of Oceania. ¹ Pope Pius XII canonized him in 1954, on June 12 according to the Society of Mary. ¹³⁴

He is also the first martyr of his own order. ¹⁴ John Paul II, greeting Marist pilgrims in Rome in 1999, recalled him as "a Marist Father and Oceania's first martyr." ⁵ Pope Francis, at the shrine of Mary Help of Christians in Port Moresby in 2024, named him among the saints in its windows, with John Mazzucconi and Peter To Rot, as "martyrs of New Guinea," figures who "began initiatives and forged paths, only to begin again many times over." ⁶

Franciscan Media lists Saint Peter Chanel as patron of Oceania, the islands of the Pacific where he worked and died. ³ None of the other sources consulted names a patronage for him, and the page claims no other.

Saint Peter Chanel's feast day is April 28, the day of his death on Futuna in 1841. ¹² Vatican News lists him on that date as "St. Peter Chanel, priest, first martyr of Oceania," and Franciscan Media and the Society of Mary give the same day. ²³⁴

Franciscan Media opens its entry by saying that anyone who has worked alone, with great adjustment demanded of them and little to show for it, will find a kindred spirit in him. ³ That is most of what Futuna was: a language learned from nothing, a bishop who did not come back for five years, several baptisms after years of work. ¹³

He did not live to see any of what followed. ¹ The island turned Catholic after he was dead, and the sources are plain that his death is what they credit for it. ¹³ Nothing in his own story promised that outcome while he was living it.

The words the encyclopedia gives him while he was being killed are three, in the islanders' language: it is well for me. ¹ Franciscan Media's reflection describes a martyr as someone who is simply a witness to God's love, and who brings out of human hearts the good or evil already there. ³

Pope Francis, standing under his image in Papua New Guinea, spoke of missionaries as people who start and then start again. ⁶ Chanel had only the one start. The people who came after him in 1842 did the starting again. ¹