St. John Gabriel Perboyre

Who they were

Jean Gabriel Perboyre was a French Vincentian who begged for the China mission for years. His own brother, sent first, died on the voyage out, and Jean Gabriel asked to take his place.

He served the scattered Christians of Hubei through the years of proscription until 1839, when a catechumen betrayed his hiding place for thirty taels of silver. Through a year of imprisonments, tribunals and tortures the demand was the persecution's standard test, the same one put to the Christians of Japan: trample the crucifix and walk free. He would not. On 11 September 1840, at Wuchang, he was strangled bound to a cross shaped gibbet. He was beatified in 1889 and canonized in 1996, and he is a separate cause from St. Augustine Zhao Rong and companions, the 120 Martyrs of China canonized in 2000, with whom he is often grouped.

Why people turn to St. John Gabriel Perboyre

Missionaries and aid workers in hostile fields. And the betrayed, by a partner or a colleague or a friend, who are trying not to become what was done to them. His page holds the price of the betrayal without any of the bitterness.

How to ask their intercession

After the betrayal, for the Perboyre grace, which is fidelity that does not curdle.