Gregory Grassi

Saint Gregorio Grassi (also known in English as Gregory Grassi) was an Italian Franciscan friar, missionary bishop, and martyr of the Catholic Church. He was born on 13 December 1833 in Castellazzo Bormida, in Piedmont, then part of the Kingdom of Sardinia. As a young man he entered the Order of Friars Minor and was ordained a priest in 1856. He volunteered for the foreign missions and was sent to China, where he spent the rest of his life in Shanxi province among a Catholic community of Chinese converts and European missionaries.

In Shanxi he became a principal figure of the Franciscan mission. In the later nineteenth century he was consecrated a bishop and served as Apostolic Vicar of Northern Shanxi, working from the region of Taiyuan. His ministry included the formation of seminarians, support for religious sisters, and ordinary pastoral government of a vicariate that faced both the usual hardships of missionary life and growing political hostility toward Christianity and toward foreigners. He collaborated closely with Bishop Francesco Fogolla and with members of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary who had been assigned to the vicariate.

The Boxer Rebellion of 1900 brought a wave of anti-Christian and anti-foreign violence across northern China. In Shanxi the governor Yuxian ordered severe measures against missionaries and Chinese Christians. On 9 July 1900 Bishop Grassi was put to death in Taiyuan together with Bishop Fogolla, several Franciscan priests, seven Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, and a number of Chinese seminarians, servants, and lay faithful. The Taiyuan massacre became one of the most fully documented martyrdoms of the Boxer period.

The Catholic Church recognized Grassi as a martyr. He was beatified by Pope Pius XII on 24 November 1946 and canonized by Pope John Paul II on 1 October 2000 as one of the One Hundred and Twenty Martyrs of China. His feast is kept on 9 July, the anniversary of the Taiyuan killings, together with the other Chinese martyrs of that group.