St. John Gabriel Perboyre, C.M. China's First Canonized Saint, Part 3 Miracles The marvelous circumstances which surrounded the death of Saint John Gabriel Perboyre, the reputation for sanctity which he left everywhere among those who had seen and known him, inspired a great many persons after he had left this world with the thought of invoking him in their needs as a patron powerful with God. Their confidence was not deflated, and many graces are related, many cures obtained through the intercession of the valiant confessor of the faith. It was upon his very tomb at the gates of the town, the place of his long suffering and heroic death, that this devotion to him took birth. When in 1858 Monsignor Delaplace, a bishop of the Congregation of the Mission, Vicar-Apostolic of Chehkiang, went to Uchangfu to take away the body of the Martyr, the servant of God was being fervently and confidently invoked in the country which gave him birth, and where he had given from his earliest, childhood sure indications of his future sanctity. A worthy priest of the parish of Mongesty, who had collected upon the very spot the testimony, has certified that several extraordinary graces have been obtained in this country by the intercession of the Martyr. [Letter of M. Saupiquet, at Mongesty, Nov. 29, 1850.] Among others the cure of a young girl, a boarder with the White Sisters at Sarlat, whom a violent attack of typhoid fever had brought to death's door and who was given up by the physicians. This child, Annie Malvina Lalbenque, received the last Sacraments on the morning of August 17, 1847. The chaplain of the convent exhorted her mother to make a sacrifice of her daughter to God. The girl during her sickness often expressed her confidence in the intercession of the Saint. The mother remembered it and begged the chaplain to say on the next day, which was Sunday, a Mass for her child and to join that evening in a novena which she was going to ask the religious to begin with her in honor of the Martyr. The next morning before daylight the sick girl called to her mother: "Mamma," said she, "my tongue is cured, my throat cleared, and I am much better." From this time the danger was warded off; the convalescence advanced rapidly and soon after the young girl, accompanied by her mother, was able to go to Puech to thank the servant of God in the house where he was born and which was already visited by numerous pilgrims, sometimes coming long distances to make their petitions or to return thanks. [Ibid., Jan. 10. 1851.] But it is especially in the family of St. Vincent de Paul that this devotion to the memory of so worthy a son of the founder of the Priests of the Mission and the Sisters of Charity was to find favor and express itself in touching manifestations of faith and piety, becoming an efficacious resource in the most desperate emergencies. Among all the facts that might be related here, we have chosen only three cures wrought in countries very distant from one another, as if God had willed to spread everywhere the glory of His servant; we select them because they seem to us to be especially noteworthy by the details, touching or marvelous, and by the gravity of the testimony by which they are attested. The first occurred in Paris in 1841, the year after the death of our Martyr. Sister Margaret Bouyssie was then twenty-one years old, of a lymphatic temperament and delicate health, weakened still more by several maladies. On April 2, during her postulancy at the Woman's Hospital for Incurables, she was attacked by pleuro-pneumonia, which soon assumed an alarming character. The Sacraments were given the young Sister, and she seemed to get a little better; they thought convalescence had begun. After a short sojourn in the country she was sent to the mother house of the Sisters of Charity, where she was to take the habit. It was there that, in the month of August, she saw for the first time Dr. Ratheau, physician of the community. He wrote his first observation upon the sick Sister as follows: "The diagnosis is easy to establish; we see that we have a case of pleuro-pneumonia, judging from the obstruction of the lung and a discharge of pus which fills three fourths of the cavity of the left pleura, and this, in a subject who is weak and even threatened with tubercules at the top of the lungs----if they do not already exist; besides, there is a general state of debility, so that we must pronounce it a very doubtful case. Nevertheless, we advise the use of all the means skill can employ, etc." None of these means succeeded. Not knowing what else to do, they wished to try again the effects of the country air. The doctor having given his consent, she was taken, on August 16, a few leagues from Paris. There the patient grew worse, the vomiting became more frequent; a fatal result seemed imminent. After four days' stay the young Sister begged to be brought back to Paris to her hospital, where she wished to die, as she said, among her sick. Dr. Ratheau went to see her and declared that, far from being improved, her condition was considerably aggravated. Things remained thus till August 22, the day on which Sister Bouyssie wished to begin a novena in honor of the new Martyr. On the 25th, in the morning, suffering more than ever, she asked to be taken up so that her bed could be made. She was seized with so violent a spell of suffocation that in a few moments she had to return to her bed. She then became drowsy and suddenly, at a quarter before twelve, she awakened and said in a strong voice; "I am cured; give me something to eat, I am very hungry." Her companions looking at her thought her delirious; but upon her insistence, and seeing the appearance of life and health that was suddenly displayed in her whole person, they brought her some soup, a chop, and a large slice of bread. The hunger that consumed her was not yet appeased. Three potatoes baked in ashes were added; she digested everything perfectly. She then arose: she had entirely recovered her strength, and went to recreation with her companions; in the evening she ate supper with them; then she went to sleep, and her slumber was calm and deep. The next day she worked all day spreading linens on the clothes lines at the hospital, and on the 27th she watched the sick the whole night. Dr. Ratheau, who at the time had declared this cure sudden and unexpected, five weeks later desired to see Sister Bouyssie. "Today, October 4, 1841," he writes, "I desired to see the patient again. I examined her anew. Her cure continues. Never, she tells me, has she felt so well. "Now," adds the worthy physician, "let us glance at the facts of the case. A patient presents herself having more than the probability of tubercules at the top of both lungs, a stoppage of the left lung, a considerable discharge of pus in the cavity of the pleura on the same side. Besides, there is a general exhaustion; her fever continues with a swelling of the lower limbs. She has a cough, violent suffocation, vomiting; and diarrhea which can scarcely be endured. The medicines, varied in many ways, either do no good or cannot be taken. This is the array of facts displayed before our eyes, and it was amid these disorders, which continued to increase, and which could only end disastrously that the crisis came. At a quarter before twelve, immediately after a light sleep and a profuse perspiration, the patient cried: 'I am cured; give me something to eat. I am very hungry.' She who could not retain bouillon, ate soup, a chop, a large slice of bread, and three potatoes. She arose shortly after, her strength entirely restored, assisted at the recreation of the Sisters, and took supper with them; slept all night, and the next day was: busy the whole day, spreading linens on the lines at the hospital, and on the third day she watched the sick all night. I ask every honest, conscientious doctor if this is the natural termination of a malady of this nature. No doubt, some persons are cured of it; but we know, too, that it requires great care, and after a long convalescence, and where was the convalescence in this case? We see her pass from serious sickness to the most perfect health. From all these facts we must draw the following conclusion: When a malady is declared organic, and a cure is wrought by passing suddenly from a state of serious disease to perfect health, this cure must be considered as the effect of a cause not natural, or, to speak more clearly, as the effect of a miracle." The following year, at Constantinople, Sister Antoinette Vincent suffered for years from a pain in her side, which she valiantly endured to pursue her studies. However in December of 1841, the pain increased to the point she had to remain in bed. It was discovered that she had an long-festering abscess as well as spleen disease that caused the organ to rupture and gangrene had set in, so much so that she was given the last Sacraments. Two novenas were begun in honor the Saint, one by the Sisters of Charity, the other by the children of the school. Friday, January 21, was the fifth day of the Sisters' novena and the third of the children's. That morning the disease had advanced so rapidly that Sister was expected to die at any moment. The prefect of the Lazarist Mission applied the indulgence for a happy death; her skin was gray and she emitted the death rattle from her throat. Meanwhile she slept for three hours in which he had a dream that she recalled upon wakening. She took it to be a sign that she would be healed. At midnight the pain was gone and she could sit up in bed and asked for food as she was ravenous and was able to eat everything brought to her. Even with this, Sister was afraid that she was merely delusional; however she was healed and it became apparent to all. The third cure came twenty years later in Guatemala. M. Mariscal, priest of the Mission there was a witness, and he wrote a letter to another priest on June 17, 1863: "I have great news to announce to you; or, to speak more properly, I must prove to you how liberal God has shown Himself to us. On the first of May Sister Broquedis was seized with fatal consumption, complicated with several other diseases, so that the best physicians of this capital despaired of her life. Following their advice, I administered to her the Holy Viaticum and Extreme Unction and applied to her the indulgence for a happy death. On the 17th the disease assumed so alarming a character that the physicians said there was in the whole town no human remedy that could cure her. At last the symptoms of death appeared-----a cold sweat, absence of pulse, eyes glassy, and a death-like pallor. The news spread like lightning through the town and all classes of society shared in our affliction. Monsignor, the archbishop, the other resident bishops, the canons, the communities of religious, both men and women, members of the administration, the ministers of the government, and all the poor anxiously inquired about the Sister's health. Amid our common affliction I did nothing but receive visits and console the Sisters. Seeing that God alone could come to our aid, taking in my hand a relic of Saint Vincent and a picture of Venerable Perboyre, I assembled all the Sisters in the oratory. After a short conference on conformity to the will of God, I begged them to confide themselves to His merciful providence, and at the same time we began a novena to Venerable Perboyre; we recited for this, nine Our Fathers, each followed by a little prayer that I had composed. We intended to do the same on each of the nine following days, if the Sister did not die before that. When the doctors returned the same day, they expected to find her dead; and what was our astonishment when we heard them say:  " 'There is some hope; we find the nature of the disease has changed.' In fact, from that time the condition of the patient improved day by day, and the progress was so rapid that her wasted body found itself able to work at the end of two weeks. Then, to fulfill the promise we had made to God, we sang the Te Deum before the Blessed Sacrament exposed in the Sisters' oratory. The president and his family desired to assist at it. The archbishop, having heard of the marvelous cure of Sister Broquedis by the intercession of the Venerable Perboyre, asked in writing the name of the Martyr, and I gave him one of his pictures, which he received with much satisfaction."   Ven. Perboyre was beatified by Pope Leo XIII on November 10, 1889 and canonized by Pope John Paul II, June 2, 1966. The Bringing to France of the Martyr's Precious Relics The value, the religious veneration, which is attached to all objects which recall the remembrance of a Saint and which made even a bishop of the New World receive with joy a picture of Blessed Perboyre, inspired the Congregation of which he is one of the glories, with the desire to gather carefully all, that may remain of the Martyr upon earth. Already the relic hall in the mother house in Paris contained a number of objects which he had used during life or which, having been used at his execution, have been consecrated by his sufferings, even by his blood, of which they bore the traces. But the most precious of his relics, what remained of his body, was still in China on the slope of the Red Mountain, near the gates of Uchangfu, where the Chinese buried him two days after his death. In 1858 one of the Lazarist Bishops in China, Mgr. Delaplace, Vicar Apostolic of Chehkiang, received from the Superior-General of the Congregation, M. Etienne, the invitation to go and look for the venerated remains. Starting from Ningpo at the end of March, after fifty-eight days' travel through all the horrors of civil war, which raged with great violence in this part of the empire, he arrived on Saturday, May 15, in the Vicariate Apostolic of Hupeh, then governed by Monsignor Spelta, the Franciscan Bishop. "On a Saturday, and in the middle of the month of May," wrote Monsignor Delaplace, "could I fail to be happy?" And yet, having just escaped the perils of a long and painful voyage, he saw arise before him, at the moment he thought he had reached the end, the most unforeseen difficulties, which seemed to make his hope as distant perhaps as ever and render almost impossible the accomplishment of his mission. No doubt, he had received from Monsignor Spelta a kind and brotherly welcome. The remembrance of the two Martyrs of the Congregation of the Mission, M. Clet and M. Perboyre, was still honored in the seminary of which the Franciscan Bishop was president and where he lived. Every year on the anniversaries of their death, February 17 and September 11 they read in the refectory the lives of these two Saints. At the time that the two prelates were about to start for Uchangfu, they learned that all the tombstones on Red Mountain had been carried off by the rebels, and that all the witnesses, whose remembrance and testimony could have supplied the place of these material guides, had disappeared and could not be heard from, one having been found dead, and the others being dispersed by the troubles of the last few years. At least they should, it was said, first send a courier and assure themselves that there was some hope of success before undertaking a journey which was not without peril. However, the confidence of the holy Missionary did not wane, and he persisted in hoping against all hope. "Never," he wrote two weeks later to M. Etienne, "has Providence demonstrated better to me than in the last two months how much there is to hope for through faith, when, humanly speaking, everything seems desperate. All our little schemes, from our first arrival here, have met with obstacles which seemed. insurmountable; yet all these have been overcome with admirable facility. I still felt that Providence favored me while at Monsignor Spelta's house." In fact, the next day after this discouraging news had caused him the greatest anxiety, Monsignor Delaplace saw coming to the bishop's residence a Catholic from Hankow, Paul Fong, son of the courageous catechist Andrew Fong, who had visited and consoled M. Perboyre in prison and who had buried him with his own hands with the help of three other Chinese faithful in the cemetery of the Red Mountain. Paul Fong himself was present and assisted with the burial. Being thirty-two years old in 1858, he was fourteen at the time of the Martyr's death. He had a very exact remembrance of it and eagerly offered to conduct the two bishops to the spot where reposed the body they wished to find. Besides, he had been praying at Blessed Perboyre's tomb a month and a half before; hearing the report that the tombstones were scattered, he declared that the stone that covered his tomb still remained intact with the inscription on it. "We breathed more freely," says Monsignor Delaplace, "after hearing these  words." The venerable Vicars Apostolic soon decided to undertake the journey and started on May 19, accompanied by M. John Baptist Tchen, secretary to Monsignor Spelta, and a native Lazarist priest, M. Vincent Fou; three days later, Saturday, May 22, the eve of Pentecost, they weighed anchor at the entrance of Hankow. Monsignor Spelta and the two Chinese priests went immediately to Uchangfu. Monsignor Delaplace remained upon the bark, where he celebrated Mass at two o'clock in the morning. Day had scarcely dawned when, in his turn, he crossed the Blue River and after stopping a few moments with a Catholic family named Tchen, whose house at the entrance to the metropolis of Hupeh, being outside the city walls, offered him a safe repose, he directed his course, when he thought he could do so without danger, towards the cemetery of the Red Mountain. He arrived there about half past seven. His companions on the journey, surrounded by a number of Catholic men and women furnished with all that was needed for the exhumation, soon found themselves at the tomb of the Martyr. Monsignor Delaplace knelt in the midst of them; he could not help admiring and blessing Providence, Whose intervention seemed more and more apparent the nearer he approached the realization of his desires. According to the report of Paul Fong, the stone placed on the tomb of the servant of God to indicate his resting place was there and had always been there. Of these stones, which covered the side of the mountain to the number of several thousands, they saw but three-----that of Blessed Perboyre and two others near by. The rebels, long masters of Uchangfu, whose ramparts they judged insufficient, wished to fortify them. The vast cemetery of the Red Mountain offered them the material already prepared; they drew from it a large contribution, devastating all the tombs to repair the old walls or to build new ones. One of the principal walls of defense was situated seven or eight feet from the tomb of Blessed Perboyre, before which they passed and repassed continually when going much farther to look carefully for stones of all sorts, and we cannot help being surprised that they had forgotten this one, whose size and shape suited them exactly. "Explain this, whoever can," adds Monsignor Delaplace. "The simplicity of the Christians of Uchangfu is contented with saying that God has taken care of His Martyr, whom He has reserved for special veneration in His Church." We feel sure the pious bishop had no difficulty in sharing the simplicity of these humble Christians, and we can understand with what pious emotion he must have read upon this stone, so providentially preserved, the following inscription engraved in Chinese characters: "May perpetual light shine upon him. Sepulchre of the noble man Tong, [which is the Chinese name for M. Perboyre] called Gabriel in holy Baptism, religious of the Congregation of St. Vincent, who died in the twentieth year of the reign of the Emperor Tao-Kuang. the sixteenth day of the eighth month." Monsignor Delaplace would have been pleased to assist at all the details of the exhumation, but the place was not very secure, being near a road much frequented, just a few steps from the new fort built by the rebels hut now occupied by the mandarins, who came almost immediately to observe what was going on about the tomb. So he returned to his morning's hiding place at the house of the Tchen family, going by the same road that Blessed Perboyre followed on September 11, 1840, at nearly the same hour to go to his death. He remained three or four hours praying in the place where the Martyr knelt in prayer looking towards the West and whence his soul went forth to Heaven. In the afternoon towards four o'clock he was preparing to make a last visit and pay his last farewell to the Red Mountain when he saw M. Fou coming escorted by two of the faithful who bore the precious remains. Without delay Monsignor Delaplace crossed the river, which he said never looked so beautiful as upon this evening, and regained the bark where Monsignor Spelta was waiting. They returned immediately with their treasure to the seminary of Hupeh. Everything was completed to their satisfaction. The morning after M. Delaplace's departure Bishop Spelta's secretary paid fifty-five hundred sapeques to the guardian of the cemetery, who had furnished the necessary workmen for disinterring the coffin. They dug for more than an hour and a half before it was obtained. The two Chinese priests found all his bones in an unusually good state of preservation, white as ivory, each in its place without confusion or mixing with earth or other foreign matter. They were taken from the coffin and carefully placed in a new case, which was taken away by Monsignor Delaplace. What added to the joy of this worthy prelate in the presence of so complete a success, was the fact that, by the least delay, all would have been lost. The coffin was not much injured by the eighteen years that it had remained in immediate contact with the earth in which it had been buried and from which it was not separated by any kind of mason work; but everyone thought it probable that the rains of the following autumn would have injured the lid, thereby breaking and dispersing the bones and making the decay more  rapid. There was another kind of danger which would have interfered if they had put off the exhumation a little later. The mandarins of Hupeh, who feared the return of the rebels, whose presence had been observed in the neighborhood, had become suspicious; they were especially distrustful of the Catholics and missionaries, whose movements were carefully watched. Some weeks later the journey that the two bishops had just accomplished would no doubt have been impossible. Scarcely had they returned to Monsignor Spelta's seminary at Tangkiaho when visits of inspection to the houses began to be multiplied. An hour after their arrival the room which had been occupied by Monsignor Delaplace, and where the remains of the Martyr had just been deposed, was inspected in every nook and corner by an officer and his escort. The Vicar Apostolic of Chehkiang understood that prudence required his swift return to his province so as to preserve his precious deposit. On May 26, the day on which they returned to Tangkiaho, the two venerable travelers wished first to thank Providence for the happy issue of their pious expedition. Monsignor Delaplace at noon said a Mass of thanksgiving and Monsignor Spelta, robed in full pontificals, chanted a solemn Te Deum surrounded by the missionaries and the young Chinese seminarians; Then they began immediately to write out the acts required by the Congregation of Rites, and to have the cases made in which the remains of the future beatified Martyr were to be enclosed and brought to Europe. During the next year Monsignor Danicourt, Vicar Apostolic of Kiangsi, left China, taking with him the remains of the confessor of the faith, which he was charged to bring to Paris to the mother house of the Congregation of the Mission. It seemed that Providence had reserved this consoling mission for the pious bishop as the crown of a glorious career so worthily fulfilled. A month did not elapse from the day he gave his precious charge into the hands of the Superior-General, till he slept sweetly in the Lord, February 2, 1860. It was on January 6th of the same year, the anniversary of the birth of Blessed Perboyre, that his ashes were brought to the house in Rue de Sevres, which a quarter of a century before he left for the last time, going with joy to the labors of the apostolate and secretly aspiring to Martyrdom. What was felt in the hearts of all the children of the great St. Vincent de Paul, M. Etienne expressed a year afterwards in a circular dated January 1, 1861, as if still under the influence of the first emotion, with that grand and simple eloquence which was natural to him. "It would be difficult," he writes, "to express the feelings of our hearts when we saw ourselves possessed of so great a treasure. Kneeling before this coffin, which breathed forth sanctity, with what affectionate veneration we loved to show our homage! It seemed to us that from the heights of Heaven he smiled on our happiness and responded to our welcome, so piously and lovingly fraternal. What joy to us all to see returned among us, surrounded by the aureola of an apostle and a Martyr, him whom twenty-five years before we had seen leave this same mother house to travel across the seas to distant shores, to which he was bringing the good tidings of salvation, to begin a career of labors, privations, and sufferings for the name of Jesus Christ and to seal with his blood his faith and his love for souls! The presence of this venerable body seemed to our eyes quite a manifestation of God's design upon us, a revelation of the future which is reserved for the Congregation among heathen nations, among which are accomplished at this time events which open among them a large field for the preaching of the Gospel. Formerly a director of novices, after having shown to new generations by his example as well as his teachings what a true Missionary should be, he returns again to teach them that he must know how to suffer and die for the glory of God and the salvation of his brothers." On January 25th of this year, 1860, on the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, the anniversary of the foundation of the Congregation of the Mission, the canonical verification of the body of the blessed servant of God took place in the hall of the mother house of the society in the presence of His Eminence, the Cardinal Marlot, Archbishop of Paris, accompanied by one of his vicar-generals, M. Etienne, Monsignor Danicourt, several priests of the Mission and two physicians, Drs. Hurteaux and Lemenant des Chenais, who were appointed to examine and describe the bones. These had undergone some change from the day on which they had been found entirely perfect in the cemetery of the Red Mountain near Uchangfu. Their color had assumed a yellowish tint, some bones, reduced to powder, were missing and made some of the members incomplete, but the head was intact and admirably preserved; they could finally reconstruct almost the entire skeleton and they had all the elements needed to determine to a certainty the age and within a few centimeters the height of Blessed Perboyre. The identity of these remains being officially proved, they were put together again with care, and, enclosed in a triple box of oak and lead, were then brought into the chapel without pomp or lights and placed immediately in the vault prepared for their reception, waiting till it please the Divine Goodness to be placed on the altar.  This vault was in an obscure place which was, besides, used as a passage way, where it was constantly trodden upon. In 1874 the provincial assembly of the missionaries in France expressed the desire that the body of the Martyr be placed in a more suitable spot. They obtained in 1879 from His Holiness Leo XIII the authority to make this translation, and it was given Aug. 21, 1879, by His Highness Monsignor Richard, then titular Archbishop of Larisse, and coadjutor to His Eminence Cardinal Guibert, Archbishop of Paris. Sources Used: Father John Fongemie, FSSP; John-Gabriel Perboyre, C.M., China's First Saint, Editions du Signe; and The Life of Bl. John Gabriel Perboyre, Tr. by Mary Randolph, Mission Press, 1916 with Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur, 1889. CONTACT US HOME---------------PRAYERS AND DEVOTIONS-----------------LITANIES www.catholictradition.org/saints/saints-special4c.htm