GABET, JOSEPH. — Missionary of St Vincent, born at Nevy (diocese of St-Claude) on 6 December 1808, died at Rio de Janeiro on 3 March 1853. Ordained a priest (27 October 1833) and admitted to the Congregation of the Mission (1834), he left for China on 21 March 1835; there, together with his confrère Evaristo Huc and at the request of the apostolic vicar of Mongolia, Mgr Mouly, he undertook a journey to Tibet in order to study the customs of those peoples and attempt to establish a mission there.
The results of the adventurous journey, which lasted from August 1844 to October 1846, were recounted by the two missionaries in the Annales de la Propagation de la Foi and the Annales de la Mission, and were subsequently collected under Huc’s name in Souvenirs d'un voyage dans la Tartarie, le Thibet et la Chine (2 vols., Paris 1850, reprinted several times, the latest edition by H. d'Ardenne de Tizac, there 1925). G. later wrote Le christianisme au Thibet, en Tartarie et en Chine (4 vols. published posthumously, there 1857). G. also wrote an interesting memorandum: Coup d'oeil sur l'état des missions de Chine présenté au St-Père le pape Pie IX (Poissy 1848), in which the author examines the causes preventing the success of the Catholic missions in Asia, and particularly in China, and indicates the means of remedying them, insisting on the need to support and increase seminaries for the indigenous clergy.