PALLU, FRANÇOIS. — Born at Tours (Indre-et-Loire, France) on 29 August 1626; died at Moyang (Fokien) on 29 October 1684. At a very young age, he was appointed canon of S. Martino of Tours and ordained a priest in Paris on 24 September 1650. Following his meeting in 1653 with Fr. A. de Rhodes, in 1657 he went to Rome together with Pierre Lambert de la Motte to ask the Pope to appoint bishops for East Asia. On 29 June 1658 he was appointed bishop of Heliopolis, and on 9 September 1659 apostolic vicar of Tonkin and administrator of Yunnan, Kang-tcheu, Hukuang, Szechwan, Kuangsi in China, and Laos.
Consecrated in Rome on 17 November 1658, he founded the Society of the Foreign Missions in order to secure assistants and successors, and on 2 January 1662 he departed for Siam, where he arrived on 27 January 1664. His first concern was to establish a seminary for the natives, which was later transferred to Penang (Malaysia). In 1667 P., who had had to struggle to have his authority recognized by the local civil and religious authorities, returned to Rome to explain the situation and obtain greater faculties. He departed again in 1670, and on 18 October 1673 was received in solemn audience by the King of Siam, who granted him freedom to preach Catholicism in the Kingdom. In 1674 he embarked for China, but, cast by a storm onto the coast of Manila, he was arrested by the Spaniards, who took him back to Europe by way of Mexico. Following the intervention of Louis XIV, he was released in 1677 and went to Rome, where he obtained the appointment of new apostolic vicars and the establishment of Annamite and Chinese bishops. In 1679 Tonkin was taken from him, and on 1 April 1680 he was appointed general administrator of the missions
in China. In 1681 he departed again for Siam and China, where he arrived on 27 January 1684; but he was soon overtaken by death. In 1912 his remains were transferred to the « Nazareth » retreat house of the Foreign Missions in Hong Kong.
As co-founder of the Foreign Missions of Paris, P. had the great merit of giving a strong impetus to missionary interest in France; through the Seminary of Paris, the missionary collaboration of the secular clergy was organized for the first time, and, moreover, the founders of the Seminary, following the ideas of Fr. Alessandro de Rhodes, emphasized the need for an indigenous clergy and an indigenous hierarchy. A son of his time, he shared the political and religious-ecclesiastical ideas of the majority of the French clergy.