Biography
Francis Regis Clet
About Francis Regis Clet
Francis Regis Clet was born at Grenoble on 19 August 1748. He entered the Congregation of the Mission in 1769 and was ordained a priest in 1773. He taught theology and helped form new members before the French Revolution disrupted the congregation’s houses. He then volunteered for mission work in China. His move from teaching to a long overseas ministry is well documented in Vincentian accounts.
Clet served Christian communities in Jiangxi and then in the wider Huguang region. Vincentian history describes long travel between scattered communities and a shortage of fellow priests. During renewed pressure on Christians he hid, but was arrested in 1819 and held at Wuchang. His colleagues and fellow prisoners are part of that account; this record does not assign their experiences to him.
He was executed on 18 February 1820. The Vincentian congregation remembers him as a priest and martyr, and the Church canonized him with other Chinese martyrs in 2000. The congregation’s proper calendar keeps his memorial on 9 July, the collective feast of those martyrs, although his death was in February. His exact birthplace and death date are supported independently of the many devotional details in later lives.
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