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| Saint Augustine Schoffler, Pray for us ! |
⛪ Saint of the Day : May 1
⛪ Other Names :
• Augustus Schoffler • Agostino Schoeffler
⛪ Memorials :
• 1 May
• 2 May (France)
• 24 November as one of the Martyrs of Vietnam
⛪ Born :
• 22 November 1822 at Mittelbronn, Moselle, France
⛪ Died :
• Beheaded on 1 May 1852 at Son-tai, Tonkin, Vietnam • His head was thrown into the Song-Ka River, his body buried in a nearby village
Augustin Schoeffler (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. He worked as a missionary to Indochina and was one of two French missionaries killed in northern Vietnam between 1847 and 1851. At the time, it was illegal to proselytize in Vietnam.
His feast day is May 1 (May 2 locally in France).
In May of 1851 in Tonkin (today northern Vietnam) a 29 year old priest of the Paris Foreign Missions Society walked gleefully towards his execution. Proselytization was illegal, and Augustin Schoeffler had been ambushed, caught red-handed and arrested. After contriving to allow some of his fellow priests to escape on the excuse that they would collect a pretend ransom, Schoeffler freely confessed to proselytization. When asked if he had been aware of the criminal nature of his activities he replied “that he knew very well, even before he left France, that the Catholic religion was strictly prohibited in that kingdom [Tonkin], but that that was the principal reason of his coming to it rather than to any other.”
And Schoeffler had certainly been busy. According to the accounting of the Vicar Apostolic, in the previous year Schoeffler had performed “two hundred baptisms of children of unbelievers, forty-one of children of Christians, and twenty-three of adults; four thousand seven hundred and seven confessions; three thousand three hundred and fifty-one communions; fifty-two administrations of the holy Viaticum; and one hundred and twenty-five of extreme unction.” [That’s actually not that many extreme unctions. I did more than that before breakfast this morning.] Two examinations of the priest in front of the local Mandarin provided more free confession of faith, but little useful information for the authorities intent on ferreting out his network.
He spent the next month in prison. On the 4th of May he was led from the prison by “Eight soldiers, sabre in hand…preceded by two companies of fifty armed men each, half lancers and half fusiliers, who walked alternately in two lines, and two elephants formed the rear-guard.” In front of the smiling priest and his guards as he walked to the place of execution a placard was carried 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.” His kneeling request for a quick execution was denied by the mandarin who was determined to observe some formalities. Finally, at the third crash of the cymbals, the executioner swung the sword at Schoeffler‘s bare neck but “the hand of the executioner trembled. He struck three blows of his sabre on the neck of his victim, and was at length obliged to cut the flesh with a knife, in order to detach the head from the body.” [You call that gore? Yeah, me, too.] The head was tossed into the river and several accounts indicate that there was a scrambling afterwards by native Christians to obtain anything soaked with his blood as relics.
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.
The Rue St Augustin Schoeffler is located in Mittelbronn.
As of May 10, 2009 a relic of Augustin Schoeffler can be found at the Assumption Grotto Church in Detroit, Michigan. Descendants of Schoeffler's family live in the area and attend the church.
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| Martyrdom of Saint Augustin Schoeffler - 1851 Vietnam |
