Peter Chanel

Who they were

Pierre Chanel was born on 12 July 1803 at Cuet in France to well-off farmers and baptised on the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel; Mary was a constant in his life. His parish priest, Abbé Trompier, took him into the little school for future seminarians in his presbytery, and as a teenager he was fired by missionaries' letters. At confirmation he took the name Louis, and on learning his mother had consecrated him to Mary before his birth, added Marie.

As a Marist missionary he was sent to the island of Futuna in the Pacific. When the king's eldest son, Meitala, embraced the faith, the king was furious, and on 28 April 1841 his son-in-law Musumusu killed Father Chanel. He was the first martyr of Oceania. Other missionaries arrived the next year, and by 1844 the whole island was Christian.

The miracles

As a martyr he was beatified without an approved miracle. Pius XII canonised him as protomartyr and patron of Oceania.

Why that counted as sanctity

Peter Chanel went to the ends of the earth with Mary's name on him, and his blood, as so often, became the seed of Christians: within three years of his death the whole island had embraced the faith.