BONNARD, JEAN-LOUIS, blessed. – Of the Paris Foreign Missions, martyred in Tonkin on 1 May 1852. Born on 1 March 1824 at St-Cristôt-en-Jarret (Loire), he entered the seminary of the Missions in 1846; ordained a priest on 24 December 1848, he departed for Western Tonkin the following year, arriving there in May 1850. His apostolate was brief, for, captured as early as March 1851, he was beheaded at Nam-Dinh after more than a year in prison. His remains, thrown into the river, were recovered by the faithful and buried at Ké-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., Lyon 1891; A. Launay, Mémorial de la Société des Missions Étrangères, II, Paris 1912, pp. 69 and 640; Streit, Bibl., XI, p. 134. Romeo Bellotti