BONNARD, JEAN-LOUIS, Blessed. – Of the Paris Foreign Missions, martyred in Tonkin on 1 May 1852. Born on 1 March 1824 at St-Christôt-en-Jarret (Loire), he entered the seminary of the Missions in 1846; ordained priest on 24 December 1848, in the following year he departed for Western Tonkin, where he arrived in May 1850. His apostolate was brief, for he was captured already in March 1851; after more than a year in prison he was beheaded at Nam-Dinh. His remains, cast into the river, were recovered by the faithful and buried at Kê-Vinh. He was beatified by Leo XIII on 27 May 1900, together with other martyrs of Annam.
BIBL.: E. Vindry, Vie du vénérable J.-L. B., missionnaire au Tonkin, 3rd ed., Ligne 1891; A. Launay, Mémorial de la Société des Missions Etrangères, II, Paris 1912, pp. 69 and 640; Streit, Bibl., XI, p. 134.