Jacques Berthieu

Life and Ministry

Jacques Berthieu was born on 27 November AD 1838 at Polminhac in the Auvergne, France, the son of a peasant farming family. Ordained a diocesan priest of the diocese of Saint-Flour in AD 1864, he served nine years as a country curate before entering the Society of Jesus at Pau in AD 1873. Sent in AD 1875 to the Jesuit mission on the island of Sainte-Marie de Madagascar off the northeast coast, he transferred in AD 1881 to the central highlands of the large island, where he learned Malagasy fluently and ministered for fifteen years in the area north of the capital Antananarivo — catechizing, building chapels, training local catechists, and shepherding the small but growing Christian community of the Imerina highlands through the political upheavals of the late nineteenth century.

Circumstances of Death

When France imposed a protectorate on Madagascar in AD 1895 and then annexed the kingdom outright in AD 1896, the Menalamba (Red Shawls) rising broke out across the Imerina highlands — a nativist and partly traditional-religious revolt against the French occupation and against the Christian missions which were associated, in the eyes of the rebels, with the French. Berthieu and his catechumens, fleeing the burning of their station, were overtaken at Ambohitra on 8 June AD 1896. The Menalamba leaders offered to spare his life if he would renounce his faith and marry a local woman they would provide. Berthieu refused four times. He was beaten, his crucifix was broken on his head, and he was shot at close range; his body was thrown into the Mananara river. (The Menalamba rising had a clear anti-colonial political dimension; the killing of Berthieu, however, was framed by the rebels themselves as a religious test, and he was killed for refusing it rather than for any role in the French administration, with which he had no connection.)

Legacy

Jacques Berthieu was beatified by Paul VI in AD 1965 and canonized by Benedict XVI in AD 2012 — the first canonized Malagasy saint, although French by birth. His witness is the witness of the country priest who had become Malagasy enough to die as one: Christ is confessed in the highland tongue by the Auvergnat who had learned it, and the four refusals at Ambohitra were the four refusals of a shepherd who had decided fifteen years earlier whose people he belonged to. His memory is honored at Polminhac in France and at the cathedral of Antananarivo, and the Malagasy church names him among its founders.