GUEBRIANT (BUDES de), JEAN-BAPTISTE-MARIE. - Born on 11 Dec. 1860 in Paris into a family of the old Breton nobility. In 1880 he entered the Seminary of St. Sulpice and on 13 Sept. 1883 he moved to the Seminary of the Foreign Missions of Paris. Ordained a priest on 5 July 1885, he left on 7 Oct. of the same year for the mission of southern Szechwan.
From 1886 to 1894 he evangelized the vast and difficult region of Kientchang, today the diocese of Sichang. Appointed pro-vicar in 1894, he had to carry out various delicate missions in Beijing, Japan, Paris and Rome. In 1905 he resumed the evangelization of Kientchang, of which in 1910 he became the first apostolic vicar. There he founded numerous schools and a seminary with 40 aspirants. In 1907 he acted as guide to the d'Ollone mission through the country of the Lolo, until then unexplored. In 1915 he was transferred to Canton, whose division into four vicariates he prepared. In 1919 Benedict XV appointed him visitor of the missions of China and in 1921 visitor of Siberia. In that same year he was elected superior general of the Society of the Foreign Missions of Paris. During the fourteen years of his superiorship, Msgr. de G., whom Pius XI was one day to call the greatest missionary of modern times, kept an ardent zeal alive in his missionaries, whom he went encouraging on the spot during his long journey in the Far East (1931-32), and promoted the cause of the native hierarchy by preparing in India, Indochina, China and Japan the cession of dioceses and vicariates to the secular clergy of the country. On 10 Dec. 1921 he was appointed titular archbishop of Marcianopolis. Died on 6 March 1935.
Bibliography
Antonio Anoge