GUEBRIANT (BUDES de), JEAN-BAPTISTE-MARIE. - B. on 11 Dec. 1860 in Paris, of a family of the ancient Breton nobility. In 1880 he entered the Seminary of S. Sulpizio, and on 13 Sept. 1883 he transferred 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, now the diocese of Sichang. Appointed pro-vicar in 1894, he had to carry out various delicate missions in Peking, Japan, Paris, and Rome. In 1905 he resumed the evangelization of Kientchang, of which he became the first apostolic vicar in 1910. There he founded numerous schools and a seminary with 40 candidates. In 1907 he guided the d'Ollone expedition through the until-then unexplored country of the Lolo. 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 generalate, mons. de G., whom Pius XI was one day to call the greatest missionary of modern times, kept an ardent zeal alive among his missionaries, encouraging them in person during his long journey to the Far East (1931–32), and promoted the cause of the native hierarchy by preparing, in India, Indochina, China, and Japan, the transfer of dioceses and vicariates to the country’s secular clergy. On 10 Dec. 1921 he was appointed titular archbishop of Marcianopoli. D. on 6 March 1935.