Pierre Chanel
1803-1841 19th century Feast day: April 28
The trust that God's work holds, even if one falls.
Who was Pierre Chanel?
Son of peasants from the Bugey, a priest and then a Marist, he set out to evangelize the island of Futuna in the Pacific. He learned its language, tended the sick, and slowly won the islanders' trust, until a chief took alarm at his own son's conversion. He was clubbed to death, the first martyr of Oceania.
In their own words
It does not matter whether or not I am killed; the religion has taken root on the island, and it will not be destroyed by my death, for it comes not from men but from God.