GIORGIO da GHEEL. - Capuchin missionary and martyr of the ancient Flemish-Belgian province, born at Oevel, near Geel (Campine), in August 1616, was already a priest when he entered the novitiate at Louvain on 11 November 1642, and died at Ngondo Mbata around 8 December 1652.
Sent to the Congo mission in 1648, he disembarked at Pinda on 29 June 1651. From his ministry in the city of San Salvador he moved to the residence at Matari. He is credited with having baptized more than a thousand indigenous people. He composed a first system of a Latin, Spanish and Congolese Vocabularium (autograph manuscript in the National Library of Rome), which was probably compiled by his confreres; in the recent edition by J. Van Wing and C. Penders, Le plus ancien dictionnaire bantu (Louvain 1928), it was transformed into a Congolese-French-Flemish dictionary. While passing through J. Jolo at the end of November 1652, he strongly reproached those Christians who had returned to idolatrous practices, even prohibited by civil law, and burned their idols and instruments; but those involved maltreated him, reducing him to the point of death. Venerated as a martyr, informative processes were opened before the Curia of Mechelen in August 1936.