Pierre Borie

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Pierre Dumoulin-Borie (February 20, 1808 in Beynat - November 24, 1838 in Tonkin; decapitated) was a French Catholic missionary priest. He is a Catholic saint, canonized in 1988.

[edit] Life

He was the sixth of the twelve children of Guillaume Borie and his wife Rose Labrunie. The Borie family was a middle-class family of the Bas-Limousin. Family members had different backgrounds. Pierre Dumoulin-Borie had as a godfather his uncle Pierre Borie, a priest refractory during the Revolution, and then curé of Sionac; but an uncle, Jean Borie, was an administrator of Corrèze, deputy in the Legislative Parliament and Convention, and one of those who voted for the death of Louis XVI.

Pierre's godfather undertook the first rudiments of his education before he left for the Seminary of Servières in 1824. He was ordained priest in Bayeux on November 21, 1830, Pierre was sent overseas, reaching Macao on July 18, 1831.

He was brought to Saigon by Chinese smugglers. He joined the South Tonkin mission, but was met with persecution. He persevered in fulfilling his pastoral task in the area which was entrusted to him. Pierre was arrested in 1838, and he learned in prison that he had been named titular bishop of Acanthus.

Exhumed secretly eleven months after his execution, the body of Saint Pierre rests today in the Room of the martyrs, at the seminary of the Foreign missions in Paris.