For believers, information about the reliquary may be a source of comfort during the pandemic. In times when there were no vaccines and little knowledge about how viruses worked, the faithful flocked to places of worship to ask God for help. In Europe, devotion to Saint Roch and Saint Sebastian spread; they became patrons offering protection from epidemics. Figures of both saints stand by the Basilica’s side (southern) entrance. A figure of Saint Roch also stands in the side chapel.

The reliquary containing the remains of John Gabriel Perboyre was brought to Bolesławiec from Cologne in 1917. The saint’s life was known to the priests from the basilica, but only after the pandemic was announced did they attach particular significance to it, because the place where the missionary was murdered coincides with the place considered the starting point of the development of SARS-CoV-2.

“At some point we began reading the story of the saint’s life, and it turned out that Saint John Gabriel suffered martyrdom in the place from which the coronavirus emerged,” vicar Damian Konieczny told Telewizja Bolesławiec.

The reliquary of the holy martyr is displayed above the tabernacle. The priests from the Bolesławiec basilica encourage the faithful to pray in the Marian Basilica.

“Today, when the coronavirus is spreading and the whole world is afflicted by this disease, God is making us aware, precisely through the relics of Saint John Gabriel Perboyre, that people should pray in this place for the world to be freed from this epidemic,” the vicar says.

John Gabriel Perboyre was born in 1802 in Puech, France. His parents were too poor to educate their son. Therefore, after completing primary school, John helped his parents work the land. Fortunately, John’s uncle was rector of the Lazarists’ (the Missionaries of Saint Vincent de Paul) seminary in Montauban. He invited John’s older brother, Aloysius, to enter the seminary. John followed in his footsteps (1819). He completed philosophical and theological studies in Paris, culminating in his ordination to the priesthood (in 1825).

For two years after his ordination, he was a professor of dogmatic theology at the major seminary in Saint-Flour (1825–1827). From 1827 to 1832, he was rector and bursar of a newly established ecclesiastical boarding school in that town. His superiors then appointed him deputy director of the novitiate at the motherhouse of S. Lazzaro (Saint Lazarus).

John, however, dreamed of missions in China. Several times he renewed his request in writing. At last he received the permission he had longed for, and on 21 March 1835 he set out for China from Le Havre.

After mastering the Chinese language, in March 1837 he began his missionary work, fulfilling his dreams in the provinces of Henan and Hubei.
The missionary was arrested on 16 September 1839. On 26 September 1839, he was taken to Tcha-Yuen-Keu, where he was tortured. When he did not break, he was taken to the prefecture in Kucheng, where he was subjected to further interrogations and torture in an attempt to extract a list of missionaries and believers from him. Only thanks to his exceptionally resilient young body did John survive the ordeal. He was taken to prison in Wuchang, where he was murdered by strangulation on 11 September 1840. He was only 38 years old.

In 1860, the martyr’s body was taken to Paris, to the Lazarists’ motherhouse. Pope Leo XIII raised him to the glory of the altars in 1889. He was the first Lazarist missionary in China to be canonized. On 2 June 1996, Saint John Paul II canonized him.

FP of the Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint Nicholas in Bolesławiec