St. Francis Regis Clet, C.M., whose feast day is Feb. 18, was imprisoned, tortured and eventually executed in 1820, during a period of harsh persecution of Christians which occurred in 19th century China. (See this Wikipedia article for more on that). But before he died, Francis spent 30 years living the life he always wanted, as a missionary, evangelizing three immense Chinese provinces: Jiangxi, Hubei, and Hunan. To get a sense of his personality, and a commentary on the times he lived in, look at some of these quotes from a letter to his brother back in France:
“We have some lax Christians but, thank God, we’ve neither philosophers nor female theologians…”
“Our ears are never assaulted with blasphemies, nor the word ‘liberty’…”
“All things considered, there are more Christians in China than in France…”