BONJEAN, CHRISTOPHE. — Missionary, archbishop of Colombo. Born at Riom (France) on 23 September 1823, he entered the seminary of the Paris Foreign Missions and was ordained a priest on 19 December 1846. Sent as a missionary to Coimbatour (India), he remained there until 1857, when he entered the Congregation of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. After the death of Mgr. Semeria, apostolic vicar of Jaffna, he was appointed his successor and consecrated bishop at Tours on 24 August 1868. In 1883 he was appointed apostolic vicar of Colombo, and when, in 1886, the ecclesiastical hierarchy was established in the Indies, he was elected the first archbishop of Colombo. He died on 3 August 1892.
A gifted writer and polemicist, he wrote many pamphlets in defence of Christian schools, on the question of Christian marriage, and on the Goan schism. He published a Directory for his missionaries, which went through several editions, and took part in the First Vatican Council. In 1885 he was summoned to Rome, together with Mgr. Laouenan, for the negotiations that led to the establishment of the hierarchy in the Indies. The voluminous memoranda presented on this occasion by Mgr. Laouenan and Mgr. B. are for the most part his work.