Biography
He was born in La Rochelle-Normande, France. He left France in 1852 to join the Catholic mission in the Guangxi province of China.
After a stay in Guangzhou, he moved to Guiyang, capital of the Guizhou province, in the spring of 1854. In December, he went, together with Lu Tingmei, to Yaoshan village, Xilin county of Guangxi, where he met the local Catholic community of around 300 people. He celebrated his first mass there on December 8, 1854. He was arrested and thrown into the Xilin county prison ten days after his arrival, and was released after sixteen or eighteen days of captivity.
Following personal threats, he went back to Guizhou in early 1855, and came back to Guangxi in December of the same year. He was denounced on February 22, 1856, by Bai San, a relative of a new convert, while the local tribunal was on holiday. He was arrested in Yaoshan, together with other Chinese Catholics, by orders of Zhang Mingfeng, the new local mandarin on February 25, 1856. He was severely beaten and locked into a small iron cage, which was hung at the gate of the jail. He was already dead when he was beheaded.
Read more about this topic: Auguste Chapdelaine
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