1900 - Leon Mangin

July 20, 1900

Zhujiahe, Hebei

Leon Mangin as a young man.

Leon Ignace Mangin was born in Verny, a town near the Moselle River in eastern France, on July 30, 1857. After completing his high school education Mangin joined the Jesuit novitiate in Amiens in 1875, at the age of 18. Six years later he was sent to teach at St. Servan High School in Liege. One of his students remembered Mangin as “one who always had a smiling face, a lively character and was full of charity. Even though he seldom played with the students, he was versatile in speech and not harsh at all, even outside the classroom. On the contrary, he was very kind to others.”[1]

Although he had once volunteered to be a missionary, it came as a shock when Mangin’s superiors assigned him to China in June 1882. He had grown to love his teaching job, and missionary work had largely been forgotten. Nevertheless, he accepted his new assignment and told a fellow priest, “I was granted what I asked for. Now I only wait for the gift of martyrdom.”[2] Leon Mangin arrived at Tianjin in October 1882, and after four years of language study was ordained a priest at Changjiazhuang in Hebei Province.

Mangin came to be loved by the Chinese Catholics. In 1890 he became Dean of Hejian—an area comprising 240 parishes with 20,000 Catholics under nine priests. After seven years he was transferred to Jinzhou County—where he laboured until his martyrdom at Zhujiahe on July 20, 1900.

Mangin not long before his death.

When the Boxers entered the church where Mangin and a large number of Chinese Catholics were hiding, a 50-year-old woman named Mary Zhu Wu stood in front of the Frenchman to protect him. She was shot dead, and moments later Mangin saw the Lord face to face. The Boxers set fire to the church and the refugees sheltered inside were burned to death.

Leon Ignace Mangin was beatified together with three other Jesuit martyrs by Pope Pius XII in 1955, and canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2000. Thus, the Catholic Church now considers the reluctant missionary a saint.