Fifty Years in the Church of Rome

by Charles Paschal Telesphore Chiniquy

In 1870, while lecturing in Melbourne, the splendid capital of Victoria, Australia, I received a letter from Tasmania, signed by twelve ministers of the Gospel, saying:

“We are much in need of you here, for though the Protestants are in the majority, they leave the administration of the country almost entirely in the hands of Roman Catholics, who rule us with an iron rod. The Governor is a Roman Catholic, etc. We wish to have you among us, though we do not dare to invite you to come. For we know that your life will be in danger, day and night, while in Tasmania. The Roman Catholics have sworn to kill you, and we have too many reasons to fear that they will fulfill their promises. But, though we do not dare ask you to come, we assure you that there is a great work for you here, and that we will stand by you with our people. If you fall, you will not fall alone.”

I answered: “Are we not soldiers of Christ, and must we not be ready and willing to die for him, as he died for us? I will go.”

On the 25th of June, as I was delivering my first lecture in Hobart Town, the Roman Catholics, with the approbation of their bishop, broke the door of the hall, and rushed towards me, crying: “Kill him! kill him!” The mob was only a few feet from me, brandishing their daggers and pistols, when the Protestants threw themselves between them and me, and a furious hand-to-hand fight occurred, during which many wounds were received and given. The soldiers of the Pope were overpowered, but the Governor had to put the city under martial law for four days, and call the whole militia to save my life from the assassins drilled by the priests.

In a dark night, as I was leaving the steamer to take the train, on the Ottawa River, Canada, twice, the bullets of the murderers whistled at no more than two or three inches from my ears.

Several times, in Montreal and Halifax, the churches where I was preaching were attacked and the windows broken by the mobs sent by the priests, and several of my friends were wounded (two of whom, I believe, died from the effects of their wounds) whilst defending me.

The 17th of June, 1884, after I had preached, in Quebec, on the text: “What would I do to have Eternal Life,” a mob of more than 1,500 Roman Catholics, led by two priests, broke the windows of the church, and attacked me with stones, with the evident object to kill me. More than one hundred stones struck me, and I would surely have been killed there, had I not had, providentially, two heavy overcoats which I put, one around my head, and the other around my shoulders. Notwithstanding that protection, I was so much bruised and wounded from head to feet, that I had to spend the three following weeks on a bed of suffering, between life and death. A young friend, Zotique Lefebre, who had heroically put himself between my would-be assassin and me, escaped only after receiving six bleeding wounds in the face.

The same year, 1884, in the month of November, I was attacked with stones and struck several times, when preaching and in coming out from the church in the city of Montreal. Numbers of policemen and other friends who came to my rescue were wounded, my life was saved only by an organization of a thousand young men, who, under the name of Protestant Guard, wrenched me from the hands of the would-be murderers.

When the bishops and priests saw that it was so difficult to put me out of the way with stones, sticks and daggers, they determined to destroy my character by calumnies, spread every where, and sworn before civil tribunals as gospel truths.

During eighteen years, they kept me in the hands of the sheriffs, a prisoner, under bail, as a criminal. Thirty-two times, my name has been called before the civil and criminal courts of Kankakee, Joliet, Chicago, Urbana and Montreal, among the names of the vilest and most criminal of men.