1949 - Maurice Tornay & Dossy

August 11, 1949

Chula Pass, Tibet

Maurice Tornay.

A native of Valais, Switzerland, Maurice Tornay[1] was born in 1910. The seventh of eight children in his family, he grew up under the influence of devoted Catholic parents. From an early age Maurice showed a seriousness about God, and he was frequently found in prayer and study. After completing high school, he joined the seminary of Grand St. Bernard. This Order was well known for their work in the Swiss Alps, where they built a monastery along the Swiss-Italian border in the 11th century. In order to rescue snowbound travellers the monks bred special dogs, later known as St. Bernards, which were specially trained to dig buried travellers out of avalanches.

The Order of St. Bernard were encouraged to commence a work in the Himalayas by Pope Pius XI, who had been an enthusiastic mountaineer before his election as pope. In 1936 Tornay asked to be assigned to the new Chinese mission. He was sent to the remote town of Weixi in Yunnan Province, where he completed his theological studies and commenced language study of both Tibetan and Chinese. Somewhat unconventionally, Tornay completed his degree on the mission field and travelled south to Hanoi, Vietnam, where he was ordained a priest in 1938.

Tornay’s first assignment was to teach at a minor seminary. He found the young boys knew very little of the faith, and he had to be like a father to them, teaching them things like how to kneel and pray, how to wash their hands, and how to eat with chopsticks. Tornay discovered he had to find innovative ways to communicate the truths of the gospel to the boys. Simply instructing them had little effect. Instead,

“He wrote plays for his students that resembled the medieval mystery plays, with their drama of their confrontation between angels and devils. These dramas had practical themes: how to overcome avarice, how to defeat an opium-smoking habit. Not strictly religious in nature, but touching critical issues of local society, they attracted both Christian and pagan audiences.”[2]

Later Tornay relocated to the town of Yanjing inside Tibet, where a strong work had been established by members of the Missions Etrangères de Paris. When Tornay arrived one of the first things he did was visit the Christian cemetery, which contained the bodies of many missionaries who had laid down their lives while trying to establish the kingdom of God in that remote area. As Maurice Tornay

“bent over the crosses in the cemetery with Latin, Tibetan, and Chinese inscriptions, he relived with deep emotion this series of persecutions, murders, and slaughter. But the harvest would come without a doubt in the world. It would certainly come because the soil had been fertilized by the blood of martyrs…. The parish [at Yanjing] numbered 320 Christians. There would be thousands more if the conditions of life and the political situation were more favourable.”[3]

Tornay was the 15th pastor of the church at Yanjing in the 80 years since its formation. After he had been in Yanjing just a few months the local Buddhist lamas broke into Tornay’s home and smashed it, as they did the church and rectory. The missionary was forced to flee and took refuge in the village of Bame in northern Yunnan Province. Ironically, Tornay lived with the same family and occupied the same room that fellow missionary Michel Nussbaum had lived in prior to his martyrdom in 1940.

All travellers coming north or south passed through Bame, so Tornay was able to get regular updates about the state of his flock at Yanjing. He was grieved to hear they were being heavily persecuted. The lamas had forbidden them to meet together, and had banned them from praying to Jesus. Tornay knew if he returned it would only harm the flock there, so he sent regular letters to Yanjing, encouraging the Christians to stand firm in the faith.

In 1949, after constant harassment from the lamas, the Swiss missionary decided to make the long journey to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, to personally petition the Dalai Lama to issue an edict of tolerance that would protect the Tibetan Christians and allow them to freely practice their religion. Tornay and several travelling companions departed on the morning of July 10th, travelling via a little-used southern route in a bid to make the local lamas believe he was heading towards Kunming and not to Lhasa. Atop the 3,350-metre (11,000-feet) Djrula Pass the group changed their direction, passing through a magnificent forest, and headed northwest towards the Tibetan capital.

Tornay shaved off his beard and disguised himself as a Tibetan to avoid detection. One of the missionary’s colleagues was Dossy (Tibetan for Dominic), a Catholic from Deqin. For 17 days they progressed deep inside Tibet, experiencing no problems until they were halfway to their destination. Somehow the head lama who had driven Tornay out of Yanjing discovered Tornay’s plans. Gun Akio could not stand the thought that the Dalai Lama would hear about the crimes he had committed against the Catholics, and he determined to stop Tornay from fulfilling his mission.

On July 27, 1949, a group of Tibetan men rode up and surrounded the unsuspecting travellers. Tornay was instructed to return to Deqin. For two weeks the Swiss missionary and his colleagues trudged back towards Yunnan Province, retracing their steps while all the time under the watchful gaze of the armed men. On August 10th they stopped at the village of Gialung, on the west slope of the Chula Pass, which marked the border between China and Tibet. The next morning as they descended down the steep slope,

“They met a merchant who told them to be on guard because he had seen a man on the lookout for a foreigner. All of a sudden, four lamas rose out of the forest, their rifles levelled…. Father Tornay shouted, ‘Don’t shoot! Let’s talk.’— The rifles cracked. Dossy dropped on the spot.”[4]

The other travellers fled into the bushes, but Maurice Tornay, the Swiss priest who had given 13-years of his life for the salvation of the Tibetan people, sealed his sacrifice with his own blood.

1. Some accounts have incorrectly spelt his name Tournay.
2. Ralph Covell, “Buddhism and the Gospel Among the Peoples of China,” International Journal of Frontier Missions (Vol. 10, No.3, July 1993), 134.
3. Loup, Martyr in Tibet, 149-150.
4. Loup, Martyr in Tibet, 216.