Editor: The people of Madagascar along with our own La Salette Missionaries who minister on this vast and beautiful island, rejoice with the universal church that Fr. Jacques Berthieu, S.J., a longtime missionary in their country, has been canonized in Rome.
The La Salette Connection
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St. Jacques Berthieu, a French Jesuit martyr and missionary to Madagascar |
Bishop Donald Pelletier, M.S., has mentioned that, on his way to the United States from his ministry in Madagascar, he went to Rome for the recent celebration of the canonization of St. Jacques Berthieu, S.J., a fellow missionary of Madagascar.
The retinue from Madagascar included five other bishops, thirty priests and 315 other Madagascar natives. After the ceremony in St. Peter’s Square, they were invited by the Jesuits to their own Belarmino College, near the Vatican, for a celebratory meal and joyful celebration with Malagasy singing and dancing.
Fr. Dick Landry, M.S., who ministered to Native Americans for several years in the U.S., went to celebrate the canonization of St. Kateri Tekakwitha (1656–1680), informally known as Lily of the Mohawks, the first Native American to be made a saint. Many Filipino Catholics also gathered for the canonization of St. Pedro Calungsod, a 17th-century Filipino martyr, supported by a large contingent of Italy’s Filipino community that also came out to celebrate.
We therefore offer a brief overview of the life and ministry of Fr. Jacques Berthieu, S.J., in honor of the many La Salettes who have served and are presently serving in Madagascar.
Fr. Jacques Berthieu, S.J.
A Jesuit and two others with Jesuit connections – Blessed Jesuit Fr. Jacques Berthieu (1838-1896), along with Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, and Blessed Peter Calungsod – were among the newest Catholic saints canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on Oct. 21, 2012.
Jesuit Father General, Adolfo Nicolás, wrote in a letter to his community: “The Society rejoices that the church canonizes a new saint from among us, proposes him as a model to all the faithful, and invites them to seek his intercession.”
His Early Life
Jacques Berthieu, born in 1838 in France, the son of deeply Christian peasants of modest means, his childhood was spent working and studying, surrounded by his family. The early death of an older sister made him the oldest of six children.
He entered the minor and then the major seminaries of the diocese of Saint-Flour, and was ordained to the priesthood on May 21, 1864. His bishop, Monseigneur de Pompignac, named him vicar in a parish in Roannes-Saint Mary, where he replaced an ill and elderly priest.
A New Call
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View of the town of Saint Flour, France |
The years went by. He began to feel attracted to the religious life, and received permission from his bishop to pursue that calling. On October 31, 1873, he entered the Jesuit novitiate in Pau.
While he was pursuing his training in the seminary of Vals, near Le Puy, in 1875 he heard a new call, and asked his overseers to send him to the mission field. In a letter, he confided the following to one of his friends: "I have been designated as a future apostle to the Malagasy.”
In those days, once in the foreign missions, there was no question of returning to one’s country of origin. “God knows,” Berthieu said, “how much I still love the soil of my country and the beloved land of the Auvergne. And yet God has given me the grace to love even more these uncultivated fields of Madagascar, where I can only catch a few souls for our Lord… The mission progresses, even though the fruit is still a matter of hope in some places, and hardly visible in others. But what does it matter, so long as we are good sowers? God will give growth when the time comes.”
Ministry in La Reunion and Madagascar
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The Island of Sainte Marie, now Nosy Boraha, Madagascar |
In 1875 he sailed from Marseille to La Réunion where he soon travelled to Sainte Marie (now Nosy Boraha), a French island off the northwest coast of Madagascar, to study the Malagasy language. With two other Jesuits and the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Cluny he formed a dynamic missionary team. He ministered there for five years, until March 1880.
The laws of Jules Ferry against religious congregations forced him to leave his ministry and return to the large island of Madagascar, then an independent kingdom. He went to Antananarivo and Tamatave and a distant mission in Ambohimandroso, south of Antananarivo (Tananarive), from 1881 to 1883. He was a highly successful missionary and nearly tripled the number of mission stations on the island’s northern end.
A Tragic and Blessed End
In 1896, while accompanying refugees who were attempting to escape a violent rebellion, Fr. Berthieu was attacked and brought to the attackers’ village, where their chief lived. He refused to accept the chief’s offer to become a counselor to his tribe. The chief promised to spare Fr. Berthieu’s life if he would renounce his faith, but he replied that he would rather die than abandon his religion. Fr. Berthieu was then attacked and killed by several men with clubs, and his body was dumped into a river.
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Father Adolfo Nicolás, S.J., General of the Jesuit Order |
As a missionary, Fr. Jacques Berthieu described his task thus: “This is what it means to be a missionary: to make oneself all things to all people, both interiorly and externally; to be responsible for everything, people, animals, and things, and all this in order to gain souls with a large and generous heart.” He also said: “"The mission progresses, while the fruits are still in hope and in many places barely visible in others. But what does it matter, as long as we are good sowers, God will push his time."
His many efforts to promote education, to construct buildings, irrigation and gardens, and to develop agricultural training all give witness to these words. He was a tireless catechist. A young school teacher, who was accompanying him on a journey, noticed that even while on horseback, Berthieu still had his catechism open before him. The teacher asked him: “Father, why are you still studying the catechism?” He answered: “My son, the catechism is a book one can never understand deeply enough, since it contains all of Catholic doctrine.”
Reflecting on the new Jesuit saint, Father General, Adolfo Nicolás, writes: “May the Holy Spirit help us put into practice the choices of Jacques Berthieu: his passion for a challenging mission that led him to another country, another language, and another culture; his personal attachment to the Lord expressed in prayer; his pastoral zeal, which was simultaneously a fraternal love of the faithful entrusted to his care, and a commitment to lead them higher on the Christian way; and finally, a life lived as gift, a choice lived out every day until the death which definitively configured him to Christ.”
Steps Toward Canonization
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Pope Benedict XVI (left) greets Bp. Donald Pelletier, M.S., retired Bishop of Morondava, Madagascar, after the Canonization Ceremony of Fr. Jacques Berthieu, S.J., missionary to Madagascar |
On October 10, 1916, Bishop Saune, Vicar Apostolic of Tananarive, appointed a commission of inquiry into the circumstances of his death. In 1933 a petition was sent to the Sacred Congregation of Rites. Finally on April 8, 1964, the official statement was made by Pope Paul VI about the martyrdom of Fr. Berthieu.
He was beatified by Pope Paul VI in Rome October 17, 1965, during the Second Vatican Council.
Pope Benedict XVI, last December 19, 2011, authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to promulgate the decrees recognizing the miracles of seven future Saints, including the French Jacques-Berthieu (1838-1896), missionary martyred in Madagascar.
He was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 21, 2012 , on the occasion of the World Mission Day.
We give thanks for God blessing the church with these new models of evangelization in this special Year of Faith and we ask that God bless us with their prayerfulness and strength of will to be God’s presence in our world today.