Saint Peter Chanel

Saint Peter Chanel was a French priest of the Society of Mary, the Marists, and a missionary on the island of Futuna in Oceania, where he was killed for the faith in 1841. He is the first martyr of Oceania. The Church commemorates him on April 28.

He was born on July 12, 1803, at Cuet in eastern France, the fifth of eight children in a farming family. The parish priest of the neighboring parish of Cras noticed his piety and took him into the school where he prepared boys for the seminary. On the day of his First Communion Peter sensed that God was calling him to proclaim the Gospel to those who did not know it.

Already in the seminary he took as his program the words “Aimer Marie et la faire aimer,” that is, “To love Mary and to make her loved.” He was ordained a priest on July 15, 1827. He was a curate at Ambérieu and then for three years parish priest of Crozet, where he renewed the religious life of a neglected parish and shared everything he had with the poor. With the consent of his bishop, which he had asked for many times, he joined the Society of Mary and worked in its seminary at Belley, first as an educator and then as superior.

In 1836 Pope Gregory XVI approved the Society of Mary and entrusted to it the missions of Western Oceania. Peter made his religious vows, and on Christmas Eve of that year he sailed from Le Havre with seven confreres. In November 1837 the missionaries reached the first islands, and Peter, at the direction of the vicar apostolic, landed on Futuna with one helper. The king of the island, Niuliki, received them into his own house.

On Futuna he lived in great poverty, in a cramped hut, suffering hunger and frequent fevers. For three years he struggled to learn the local language so as to translate prayers into it and explain the truths of the faith to the islanders. He visited distant villages, cared for the sick, and baptized dying children, and after a civil war he tended the wounded and reconciled enemies. The Martyrology stresses his remarkable gentleness. In time more and more young people asked to be prepared for baptism, among them the king’s son.

The king, who attributed his victory in the war to his gods, grew ever more hostile to the missionary, and his son’s conversion drove him to anger. By his order it was decided to kill Peter. Early on April 28, 1841, the attackers burned the house of the catechumens, wounded even the king’s son, and came to Peter’s hut. They beat him with clubs and spears, and one of them dealt him a fatal blow to the head with an axe.

The following year other missionaries came to Futuna, and within a few years the whole island had embraced the faith, his killers included. Leo XIII beatified him in 1889, and Pius XII canonized him on June 12, 1954. John Paul II, in the apostolic exhortation “Ecclesia in Oceania,” named him first among the witnesses of faith who planted the Church on the islands of Oceania. He is venerated as the patron of Oceania.