Pierre Maubant

Pierre-Philibert Maubant was born on 20 September 1803 in Vassy, in the Calvados department of Normandy, France. Formed for the diocesan priesthood, he later entered the Société des Missions Étrangères de Paris (Paris Foreign Missions Society), a society of secular priests dedicated to the Asian missions. In the early 1830s he was sent east. After a period associated with the China missions he was assigned to Korea, a kingdom that had received Catholicism through Korean lay converts returning from Beijing but that still had no resident foreign clergy and that officially forbade the Christian faith.

In January 1836 Maubant crossed into Korea in disguise, becoming the first member of the Paris Foreign Missions Society to enter the country and one of the first European priests to minister there. He was joined later that year by Jacques-Honoré Chastan and, in 1837, by Laurent-Joseph-Marius Imbert, the vicar apostolic. Working in secret, the three priests traveled among scattered Catholic communities, celebrating the sacraments, instructing catechumens, and organizing an underground church that had previously been led entirely by laity. Their presence both strengthened the community and increased the danger of a government crackdown.

In 1839 the Gihae persecution erupted. Korean Catholics were arrested and tortured in an effort to force them to reveal the whereabouts of the foreign missionaries. To prevent further suffering among the faithful, Bishop Imbert instructed Maubant and Chastan to give themselves up. The three men surrendered, were interrogated, and were condemned to death. On 21 September 1839 they were beheaded at Saenamteo, an execution ground on the Han River in Seoul.

Maubant was beatified on 5 July 1925 by Pope Pius XI among the martyrs of the Korean persecutions, and he was canonized on 6 May 1984 in Seoul by Pope John Paul II as one of the 103 Korean Martyrs. The group is commemorated on 20 September. He is remembered as a pioneer missionary who chose to share the fate of the Korean Catholics he had come to serve rather than remain in hiding while they were tortured on his account.