St. Lawrence Bai Xiaoman

Lawrence Bai Xiaoman was a Roman Catholic saint from China. He was born in Guizhou to a poor family and became an orphan at a young age. He married in his 30s and had a daughter. Augustus Chapdelaine, a French missionary went to Guangxi in the 1850s to preach the gospel. At this time, Christian missionaries were forbidden to enter the interior of China away from the treaty ports. Bai was baptized as a Catholic in 1855 and took the name 'Lawrence'. He became closely attached to Chapdelaine.

He was a Catholic for only a year before he was put to death. At the time, a bitter civil war was being fought in China between the Taiping rebels and the Qing government. The Taipings were Christians who believed that their leader Hong Xiuquan was the brother of Jesus Christ. The rebellion had started in Guangxi and the Qing armies massacred huge numbers of civilians in areas that were associated with the rebellion.

Augustus Chapdelaine was known in Guangxi for carrying out missionary activities in a way that offended traditional Chinese customs and culture, especially concerning ancestor worship. In 1856, Chapdelaine was arrested by Qing authorities and they decided to execute him rather than to deport him to one of the Chinese treaty ports where European missionaries were legally permitted to stay. Bai Xiaoman spoke out against his sentence and was arrested by the Qing authorities. Fifteen others were also arrested in association with this episode, including another saint named Agnes Tsao Kou Ying who was also put to death.