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Biography

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Just Ranfer de Bretenières, commonly known as Just de Bretenières, was a French Catholic missionary priest of the Paris Foreign Missions Society and one of the 103 Korean Martyrs canonized by the Catholic Church. He was born on 28 February 1838 in Chalon-sur-Saône, in the Burgundy region of eastern France, into a family belonging to the local nobility. From an early age he showed a marked religious sensibility and a desire to serve as a missionary. After preliminary studies he entered the seminary of the Missions Étrangères de Paris, the society responsible for the Catholic mission in Korea, a kingdom that had been closed to most foreigners and that had already seen severe persecutions of Christians in 1839 and 1846.

He was ordained to the priesthood in 1864 and soon afterward set out for East Asia. He arrived in Korea in 1865 and began the clandestine work of a missionary priest: learning the Korean language, administering the sacraments, and supporting a Catholic community that lived under the constant threat of arrest. The Joseon government, especially during the regency of the Heungseon Daewongun, viewed Christianity as a dangerous foreign doctrine incompatible with Confucian social order. Missionaries and Korean converts therefore operated in secrecy, often moving at night and hiding in remote villages or in the houses of the faithful.

In the first months of 1866 the Byeongin persecution erupted. Apostolic Vicar Siméon-François Berneux was arrested in February, and the remaining French priests were hunted down. Just de Bretenières was captured, interrogated, and tortured. He declined to apostatize and declined to betray Korean Catholics. Condemned to death, he was led to the execution ground of Saenamteo, on the Han River in Seoul, and was beheaded on 8 March 1866. He was twenty-eight years old. Several of his confreres, including Pierre-Henri Dorie and Louis Beaulieu, suffered the same fate in the same days; Bishop Antoine Daveluy and others were executed later that month.

The Catholic Church formally recognized his martyrdom in the twentieth century. Pope Pius XI beatified him on 5 July 1925 together with a large group of Korean martyrs of the nineteenth century. Pope John Paul II canonized him on 6 May 1984 in Seoul, during an apostolic visit to Korea, as one of the 103 Korean Martyrs (Saint Andrew Kim Taegon, Saint Paul Chong Hasang, and Companions). Their collective liturgical feast is observed on 20 September. Just de Bretenières is venerated as a young priest who gave his life for the faith on the Korean mission in the mid-nineteenth century.

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