1865 - Gabriel Durand

September 28, 1865

Mainkung, Tibet

Gabriel Pierre Marie Durand was born in the French town of Lunel on January 31, 1835. Raised in a God-fearing home, he grew up hungry to know God and to make him known to as many people as possible. After finishing high school he entered the minor seminary of Beaucaire, and then the great seminary at Montpellier.

During these years of study, it became clear to Durand that his life would be best spent in missionary service. He entered the Missions Etrangères de Paris in May 1857, being ordained a Catholic priest a year later. On August 29, 1858, the young Frenchman bid farewell to his family and friends and turned his back on his home country. Gabriel Durand was appointed to the most isolated and dangerous mission anywhere at the time, that of Tibet. Just to get there was an ordeal. He travelled overland from Ningbo in Zhejiang Province, crossing through Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan and Sichuan, which he reached just before Christmas in 1859. The magistrate at Chongqing was unhappy at the missionary’s plans to enter Tibet and he was ordered to return to south China under armed escort. One of Durand’s Chinese travelling companions managed to sway those assigned to guard them, and they continued on towards their destination.

Durand studied Chinese and the local dialect of Tibetan at his base in the village of Bonga, along the present-day Tibet-Yunnan border. He taught Latin to some of the students at a school there, before relocating to the town of Tsadam in June 1863, where he was given the task of discipling a small group of new converts. Tsadam was inside Tibet-proper, near the present-day town of Mainkung on the western bank of the Nujiang River.

A furious and spiteful attack by Tibetan Buddhist lamas led to several Catholic churches and missions being destroyed in the region. The Christians at Tsadam were among those persecuted, and a number of them abandoned their faith as a result. At the beginning of 1865 Durand boldly moved back to a village near Bonga, hoping to recommence his former work. Another wave of attacks in September of that year resulted in the Frenchman seeking to withdraw to a safer area. While he attempted to cross the Nujiang (Salween) River on September 28th, the 30-year-old Durand was chased by an angry mob and hit by two shotgun bullets. He fell into the water dead. It later emerged that the Buddhist lamas at Mainkung had hired the murderers.

Gabriel Durand’s body was discovered downstream on October 16th, some three weeks after his martyrdom. It was recovered from the river and lovingly buried in a Tibetan village.