Modeste Andlauer

Modeste Andlauer was a French Jesuit priest and missionary born on 22 May 1847 in Rosheim, Alsace, which at the time of his birth formed part of France. He entered the Society of Jesus in the latter part of the nineteenth century and, after completing his formation and ordination, was sent to the Jesuit mission in northern China. He arrived in the early 1880s and was assigned to the vicariate of Southeastern Zhili, in what is now Hebei province, a region long entrusted to French Jesuits.

For nearly two decades Andlauer carried out the work of a country missionary among Chinese Christians and catechumens. He resided in the district of Jingxian and Wuyi, traveling to villages, celebrating the sacraments, and sharing the often isolated life of the rural mission. Contemporary Jesuit notices describe him as unassuming and persevering rather than as a public figure. By the summer of 1900 he was living at the mission residence in Wuyi.

In 1900 the Boxer movement, which combined anti-foreign sentiment with hostility to Christianity, erupted across northern China. In mid-June the violence reached the Jesuit stations of Zhili. On 19 June 1900 Boxers attacked Wuyi. Father Rémy Isoré, a fellow French Jesuit from a nearby post, was then with Andlauer. The two priests were put to death that day; accounts transmitted by the mission state that they were killed at or near the church, having chosen not to flee. Their martyrdom occurred amid a wider slaughter of clergy, religious, and lay faithful in Hebei during the Boxer Rebellion.

The Society of Jesus and the Catholic Church in China promoted the cause of the Boxer-era martyrs. Pope Pius XII beatified a group of them, including Modeste Andlauer, on 17 April 1955, in the cause associated with Léon-Ignace Mangin and companions of the Jesuit mission in Zhili. On 1 October 2000 Pope John Paul II canonized one hundred twenty martyrs who had suffered in China from the seventeenth century through the Boxer uprising, among them Andlauer, under the title of Saint Augustine Zhao Rong and Companions. The group is commemorated liturgically on 9 July. Andlauer is honored as one of the Jesuit missionary martyrs of China; specific individual patronages attached to his name alone are not well documented in standard sources.