He was a member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, a religious institute based in Paris, better known as the "Picpus Fathers", which had been founded during the turmoil of the French Revolution.
[1] The first members of his congregation had arrived in Honolulu, Hawaii, on 9 July 1827, under the leadership of Father Alexis Bachelot, SS.CC., named the first Prefect Apostolic for the region by the Holy See.
[2] This quick success, however, sparked the opposition of the Congregationist missionaries who had arrived from the United States several years earlier and who had been embraced by the chiefs of the kingdom.
Encouraged by the Protestant clergy, the chiefs passed laws which imposed heavy penalties, such as forced labor, beatings and imprisonment on their people who embraced Catholic practice.
[2] This led to a Catholic underground where the two French priests had to care for their new flock by presiding over private Masses in darkened homes and had to offer catechetical instruction for new converts in secret.
[3] An Irish seminarian in the Hawaiian community, Brother Columba Murphy, SS.CC., still a layman in the eyes of the government, made frequent visits to the mission, continually appraising the situation for the Fathers in Mexico.
[1] Religious persecution eventually ended after the arrival of a French frigate, L'Artémise,[a] captained by Cyrille Pierre Théodore Laplace, in the process of circumnavigating the world.
The chiefess of the island, Kekauʻōnohi, was a staunch Protestant, and, while not taking any open steps, did not interfere when lower chiefs would imprison and impose heavy penalties on those who established ties with the mission.