Venerable Henri Verjus

Henri Baptiste Stanislas Verjus (born May 26, 1860, in Oleggio, Piedmont-Sardinia; died November 13, 1892, in the same town, then part of Italy) was a French missionary and Vicar Apostolic of New Pomerania (present-day New Britain, Papua) in 1889. On March 3, 2016, he was declared venerable by Pope Francis. The Apostle of the Papuans entered the monastery at age 12, became a missionary at 17, and departed for New Guinea in 1884. The following year, after passing through Thursday Island and nearby islands north of Queensland, where he began his mission with Louis André Navarre, he reached New Guinea, undertook its evangelization, and founded missions on York Island and later Yule Island. Confronted by a Protestant presence and British opposition, he was forced to leave, but he returned in 1886 to conduct several explorations and evangelization missions. In 1889, he was appointed Vicar Apostolic of New Pomerania (New Britain) and subsequently Coadjutor Vicar Apostolic of New Guinea, with the title of titular bishop of Limyra. Exhausted by incessant labor and illness—having contracted typhoid fever in 1884—he died at the age of 32 during his only return to Europe.