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The saints

St. Peter Chanel

A French missionary on a tiny Pacific island who made few converts, and then the whole island believed.

Feast: 28 April · 1803 to 1841 · The modern era · France and Futuna, in the South Pacific

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Engraved portrait of St. Peter Chanel as a young priest.

Claude Nicolet, 1885. Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.

Home / The saints / St. Peter Chanel

Futuna, South Pacific, 1841

Peter Chanel was a country priest in France who joined the Marists to go to the missions.1

He was sent to Futuna, a small island in the Pacific, with one lay brother.1

For three years he learned the language, cared for the sick and baptized very few.

Patron of Oceania1

01St. Peter Chanel

Martyred

When the king’s own son asked for baptism, the king sent men who clubbed Peter to death.1

Within a short time, nearly the whole island had become Catholic.1

Live it this week

Keep going where nothing seems to grow

Peter saw almost no fruit in his lifetime. Pick one good thing you’ve been doing that seems pointless (praying for someone, a small ministry, teaching a teenager) and keep doing it every day this week.

Notes

How we know · 1 source for this page
  1. Franciscan Media, Saint of the Day: “Saint Peter Chanel”. franciscanmedia.org. franciscanmedia.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.