Andreas Borgniet

Bishop Andreas Borgniet

Andreas Borgniet SJ , also André-Pierre Borgniet (born February 14, 1811 in Mainz , † July 31, 1862 in Xian (Cangzhou) , China) was a Roman Catholic bishop and missionary to China.

Life

Andreas Borgniet was born in Mainz, the capital of the French Département du Mont-Tonnerre (Donnersberg), in what was then the French Empire. His parents were French and lived there, as his father was a soldier in the fortress garrison of Mainz. Ecclesiastically, the city was the episcopal seat of the French diocese of Mainz , under Bishop Joseph Ludwig Colmar , congruent with the political department.

In 1816 the left Rhineland fell back to Germany, the Département du Mont-Tonnerre and the French Grand Diocese of Mainz were smashed. The Borgniet family therefore returned to France and settled in the city of Marquion , diocese of Arras . Andreas Borgniet grew up there and attended the diocese's seminary , where he was ordained a priest in 1835 .

Borgniet entered the Jesuit order in 1845 . On January 21, 1856 , the Apostolic Vicariate Kiang-nan was established in Nanking (now Nanjing ), China, and assigned as a mission area to the Jesuit order. Father Andreas Borgniet, who was already active on site as a pastor, was appointed by Pope Pius IX on April 2, 1856 . appointed as the first Apostolic Pro-Vicar (without episcopal ordination) of the Sprengels. On April 2, 1859 he was promoted to Apostolic Vicar and at the same time Titular Bishop of Berissa . He was ordained bishop on October 2, 1859 in Shanghai by Joseph-Martial Mouly , Vicar Apostolic of Beijing .

The pontificate of Bishop Andreas Borgniet was overshadowed by severe persecution of Christians and armed conflicts between China and England and France in the so-called Second Opium War . Between 1856 and 1864, 24 missionaries were murdered, including the French Father Auguste Chapdelaine, which France cited as a reason to join the war with England. Only after the end of the war or after the ratification of the Beijing Convention did Christians receive the legal right to missionary activity and property in 1860; the church organization could be consolidated.

Bishop Borgniet died of cholera on July 31, 1862 in Xian (Cangzhou) , ancient Siena . His successor as Apostolic Vicar was the French Adrien Languillat from 1864 to 1878 .

On April 11, 1946, the Apostolic Vicariate was elevated to the Archdiocese of Nanking .

Web links

• Short biography with picture , accessed on December 21, 2016
• Entry on Andreas Borgniet on catholic-hierarchy.org ; accessed on December 21, 2016.

literature

• Ángel Santos Hernández: Jesuitas y obispados . tape 2 . Univ. Pontifica Comillas, 2000, ISBN 978-84-89708-99-0 , pp. 225 f . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
• Valentine Montanar:  Kiang-nan . In: Catholic Encyclopedia , Volume 8, Robert Appleton Company, New York 1910. With mention of Andreas Borgniet.
• Piolet: Les Missions Catholiques Françaises au XIXe siècle. Volume III. Paris 1900.
• Ludwig Missionsverein Munich: Annals of the spread of the Christian faith. Volume 35. Munich 1867, p. 519 ( digitized in the Google book search, with mention of Borgniet).
• Heinrich Hahn: History of the Catholic Missions. 3rd volume. Du Mont Verlag, Cologne 1860 p. 401, ( digitized in the Google book search, with mention of Borgniet).