Bl. Denis of the Nativity

Pierre Berthelot was born at Honfleur in Normandy in 1600 and went to sea young. In India he became chief pilot and cosmographer (map-maker) for the kings of France and Portugal; his sea charts still survive.

In 1635, at Goa, he joined the Discalced Carmelites, taking the name Denis of the Nativity, and he was ordained a priest in 1638. That year he went with a Portuguese embassy to the Sultan of Aceh on Sumatra, as chaplain and pilot.

In Aceh he and a Carmelite brother, Redemptus of the Cross, were enslaved and then killed on the seashore on November 29, 1638. Leo XIII beatified them in 1900.

Denis of the Nativity was beatified in 1900.

Beatification allows public veneration, usually in a particular region or religious family. Canonization extends it to the whole Church.