Bernard Petitjean
French missionary of the Paris Foreign Missions. In March 1865 Christians of Urakami who had kept their faith in secret made themselves known to him in his church at Nagasaki. As vicar apostolic he reported the end of their exile in 1873.
Francisque Marnas, the historian of the mission, says that Petitjean was born at Blanzy in the French department of Saône-et-Loire on 14 June 1829 (Petitjean, in Marnas, vol. 1, p. 420). On 17 March 1865 a group of villagers from Urakami came to the church he served at Nagasaki, and a woman among them told him that their hearts were the same as his; Marnas tells the scene from Petitjean’s letters of 18 and 22 March (Petitjean, in Marnas, vol. 1, pp. 487–489). The journal that Petitjean kept in the days after records his questions to them and his care not to expose them to the officers who watched the church (Petitjean, in Marnas, vol. 1, pp. 492–496).
In 1873 he signs himself bishop of Myriophite and vicar apostolic of Japan. His circular of 6 May that year reports that the edicts against Christianity had been taken down and the exiles of Urakami released, and adds that this was not yet religious liberty (Petitjean, in Marnas, vol. 2, pp. 265–266, circular of 6 May 1873). See the Hidden Christians of Japan Come Forward.
In the timeline
- 17 March 1865, firm dateThe Hidden Christians of Japan Come Forward
On 17 March 1865 villagers from Urakami tell the French missionary Bernard Petitjean, in his new church at Nagasaki, that their hearts are the same as his. They had kept baptism in secret under the ban. Deported from 1868, the survivors come home in 1873.