Augustin Schoeffler

Augustin Schoeffer (1822 – 1851) was a French saint and martyr in the Roman Catholic Church and a member of the Paris Foreign Missions Society. He was a priest in Lorraine who joined the Foreign Missions of Paris.[1] He worked as a missionary to Indochina and was one of two French missionaries killed in northern Vietnam between 1847 and 1851.[2] His feast day is May 1 (May 2 locally in France).[1]

Early life and Education

Augustin Schoeffler was born on the 22 of November, 1822, in Mittlebronn, France.[3] He was baptized the next day. From 1834-1842 he studied at the minor seminary of Pont-à-Mousson and the college of Phalsbourg. From 1842-1846 Schoeffler studied Philosophy at the major seminary of Nancy. On the 5 October 1846, he began training in the Seminary of Foreign Missions of Paris. On May 29, 1847 Augustin Schoeffler was ordained a priest in Paris.[4]

Missionary Life

•November 18, 1847: left Antwerp for Tonkin.

•July 6, 1848: arrived in Tonkin.

•1848-1851: Worked as missionary while learning the Vietnamese language.

•Spring 1850: Left for the north of the country where his bishop gave him the task of evangelizing to Son Tay.

•March 1, 1851: Schoeffler was arrested.

•March 5, 1851: Schoeffler was found guilty of proselytizing.

•May 1, 1851: Schoeffler was beheaded at Son Tay.[4]

As Father Schoeffler walked to his place of execution, a placard, which read, "He preached truly the whole charge of preaching the religion of Jesus. His crime is patent. Let Mr. Augustin be beheaded, and cast into a stream."[5] was carried before him. Augustin Schoeffler's head was thrown into the Red River, and was never recovered.[3] The crowd rushed to collect relics. Some even uprooted the grass that was stained with his blood.[6] His body was buried on the site of his execution. Two days later, local Christians exhumed the body and reburied it in a Christian village nearby.[3]

Sainthood

On September 24, 1857, Augustin Schoeffler was declared Venerable by Pope Pius IX. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII on May 7, 1900. He was made a saint by Pope John Paul II on June 19, 1988.

Relics

As of May 10, 2009 a relic of Augustin Schoeffler can be found at the Assumption Grotto Church in Detroit, Michigan.[7] Descendants of Schoeffler's family live in the area and attend the church.[8]

References

1.^ a b Englebert, Omer; Christopher and Anne Fremantle, translation (1994). The Lives of Saints. New York: Barnes and Noble Books. ISBN 15661951609781566195164.

2.^ McLeod, Mark W. (1991). The Vietnamese response to French intervention, 1862-1874. New York: Praeger. pp. 171. ISBN 02759356209780275935627.

3.^ a b c Société des Missions Etrangères de Paris (French)

4.^ a b Noblet, Joseph; Jean-Paul Berlocher (1988). An Adventurer For God. pp. 46. OCLC 25134446.

5.^ Marshall, Thomas William M (1862). Christian Missions; Their Agents, Their Method, and Their Results. London Burns and Lambert. OCLC 162573014. http://books.google.com/books?id=0t8CAAAAQAAJ&dq=augustin+schoeffler&source=gbs_navlinks_s.

6.^ Nola Cooke (June 2004). "Early Nineteenth-Century Vietnamese Catholics and Others in the Pages of the Annales de la Propagation de la Foi". Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 35 (2): 261–285.

7.^ Assumption Grotto News

8.^ Te Deum laudamus!