Martyred by the monks: how a Catholic missionary died at the hands of Tibetan lamas

In 1949 Swiss missionary priest Maurice Tornay was killed on the Yunnan-Tibet border by lamas who were staunchly opposed to incursions by a foreign religion

Aug 27, 2026

In 1949 a headstrong young Swiss missionary set off in disguise on a journey from Yunnan to Lhasa to make a personal appeal to the young Dalai Lama against being expelled from his parish in Tibet. But Pere Maurice Tornay was betrayed, hunted down by Tibetan lamas and murdered on a high mountain pass just a short distance from the safety of the Yunnan mission’s headquarters.

The Christian churches of the upper reaches of the Mekong and Salween rivers in north-west Yunnan are tranquil places today. Curiosities in a country that is predominantly Buddhist, Taoist or Muslim, the isolated churches were founded by French and Swiss missionaries to serve the once marginalised communities of Lisu, Naxi and Tibetan people who cultivate the foothills of the Gaoligigong mountains.

[This article is based on a longer article published in French by Antonin Bonnard. I have translated it into English here.]

Today they attract sightseers who come to snap the odd mixture of western and eastern architecture of the small churches, or to sample the rustic red wine made from grapes introduced by the French missionaries from their homeland.

But a century ago, the mile-deep canyons of these mighty rivers were a flashpoint for geopolitical and sectarian tensions that saw churches and temples being razed, worshippers persecuted and both priests and lamas being hounded, tortured and killed. How did this ‘holy war’ come about?

The answer is that is was not really a clash of religions, but a collision of three major geopolitical power groups (Tibet, China, western powers), at the centre of which the western missionaries became the most visible and vulnerable targets for reprisal.

Before telling Tornay’s story, it’s important to understand the context of the Tibetan borderland environment into which he arrived as a missionary in 1936.

As with so many problems of the time, it all started with the British. When they invaded Tibet in 1904 the disrupted an uneasy but stable relationship between Tibet and China that had developed over the many years of the Qing dynasty. China exerted suzerainty over Tibet and acted as its secular protector, while Tibet provided China with Buddhist spiritual guidance, as recognised by the Lama Temple in the heart of Peking.

When the British Army marched into Tibet and occupied Lhasa, the old status quo was smashed. China copied the British example and expanded into Tibet, Qing dynasty forces challenged the power of the landowning Tibetan monasteries, destroying temples and killing many high officials and lamas.

In the Kham centre of Batang a Tibetan uprising against foreign incursion targeted Chinese interests but also led to the killing of two French missionaries based in the town. Further south, in 1905 the aggressive Tibetan lamas also hounded two other French missionaries to their deaths across the border in Yunnan, at a Catholic mission on the Mekong river. For good measure they burned down the Catholic churches, such as the one at Cizhong. The renowned plant collector George Forrest was in the area at the time, and only narrowly escaped execution.

These killings were a pretext for the Qing forces to intensify their invasion of Tibet, in which they initially captured Qamdo and later went as far as to march on and occupy Lhasa in 1910, causing the Dalai Lama to flee to India. Ultimately, China annexed a large chunk of eastern Tibet into Sichuan (and ‘Xikang’), an area that included several large and influential monasteries.

It was into this febrile environment that young Maurice Tournay arrived in 1936 from Switzerland. The trainee Canon (not yet ordained) came from a rural Swiss village near Geneva, and had grown up in the mountains of the Alps, tending cattle. At an early age he developed a vocation to help the poor, after seeing the plight of people on a pilgrimage to Lourdes. He joined the Congregation of St Bernard, famous for its providing assistance and refuges to mountain folk, and after which the dog is named.

He travelled first from Dali to Weixi, a small hillside town above the Mekong river, populated by a mix of Lisu, Naxi and Tibetan people. Here there was a well-established Catholic church that was part of the ‘Diocese of Tibet’ whose headquarters was Kangding in Sichuan.

In his first year, Tornay worked hard to learn the Tibetan language, because there was a lot of mistrust and suspicion among the local Tibetans towards the Christian missionaries. The anti-foreign sentiment was stoked by the Tibetan lamas because they had three major resentments against the missionaries.

Firstly, the missionaries were challenging the powers of the Tibetan monasteries as landowners. They took over land for the churches and grew crops. Worse still, the Tibetans converted by the missionaries no longer paid taxes, rented land or did forced labour for the monasteries - and they got a free education which they would otherwise have paid the lamas for.

Secondly, by converting to Tibetans to Christianity, the missionaries were weakening the political and spiritual power of the monasteries as overseers on all matters of religion and local legal authority.

Thirdly, the missionaries had the backing to the Qing dynasty officials, and their churches were seen as a ‘Trojan horse’ by the Tibetan lamas for infiltration and expansion of Chinese power into the Tibetan lands.

To try win over the Tibetans at a person-to-person level, Tornay embarked on a classic St Bernard project - the construction of a mountain refuge or ‘hospice’ for travellers high on a trail between the Mekong and Salween rivers.

The Latsa building project near Puladi, south of Gongshan, was successful in winning over many local people. However the project had to be abandoned after the foundations were laid down, because of increasing disruptions in supplies and workers caused by the Japanese occupation of China.

Ordination - and a new Tibetan parish

After a visit to Vietnam (then known as French Indo-China) to be ordained, Tornay returned to work at churches such as the major one at Cizhong (now rebuilt) and Cikou, as well as at the Weixi churches.

In 1945, as the war ended, he was tapped to become the next priest at the church in Yanjing, just across the border in Tibet. It lies on the Mekong river about 170km north of the church at Cizhong, but the rough riverside highway through the canyon required five days of travel by mule caravan to get there.

Yanjing was just a small village of Tibetans and Naxi people but it was important as the regional centre for salt production. A saltworks was almost as valuable as a gold mine in this part of the world, because it was the only source of an essential for preparation and storage of food.

The previous priest at Yanjing - a Father Michel Nussbaum - had been killed by a gang of thugs that the Catholic missionaries priests suspected had been instigated by the lamas of two nearby monasteries.

When Tornay moved in to the role, he immediately faced a strong campaign of opposition from the lamas at the two monasteries.

In late 1945 he received a message from the local lamas ordering him to vacate the church at Yanjing, on the excuse that they had bought the land it was on and needed it to grow crops.

The stubborn Tornay refused, and received backing from the other missionaries, who called on senior clergy in the ‘Diocese of Tibet’ to help. This led to a note being issued by the Chinese governor of the region allowing Tornay to stay, but this only aggravated the local Tibetan monastery lama officials even further.

In early 1946 they sent a band of 12 armed guards to evict Tornay from Yanjing and ‘deport’ him back across the border into Yunnan. The solo unarmed priest had no way to resist - and he was expelled.

For the next two years Tornay moved around the various churches in the Mekong-Salween area of the mission stations; seeking way to re-enter Tibet and reclaim his parish, but his efforts came to nothing. He tried crossing the border on foot, but was turned back by the same local lamas and officials who had expelled him.

Interventions by Chinese officials and foreign ambassadors made no difference - the door was firmly closed. He was not helped by the increasing instability and uncertainty caused by the ongoing civil war in China, withe the Communist forces making headway in many rural areas.

Eventually Tornay decided the only possibility of regaining access to his Tibetan parish was to go over the heads of the local Tibetan lamas and negotiate directly with the Tibet government. He decided to travel to Lhasa to appeal to the young Dalai Lama in person.

In 1948, the 14th Dalai Lama was only 13 years old and although he had been formally enthroned 1940, he had no real power. Political authority was exercised through the Tibetan government and the Regent, Taktra Rinpoche (Ngawang Sungrab Thutob).

After his trip proposal was initially turned down by provincial Catholic missionaries, Tornay travelled to Shanghai and eventually won approval from senior Catholic clergy - but not from Chinese officials. However the news of his inland China trip and his meeting with Chinese government agencies soon reached the Tibet borderlands, leading the lamas to believe Tornay was collaborating with Chinese interests. That confirmed him as an enemy in the lamas’ eyes.

As he knew from personal experience that Tibet was ‘closed’ to all foreigners, Tornay decided to make a secret overland trip from Deqin in Yunnan in disguise. He cut off his distinctive beard and dressed as a Tibetan caravan horseman.

The ruse did not last long once he entered Tibet in early 1949, accompanied by several loyal supporters from Yanjing and Deqin. Despite keeping a low profile and off the beaten track, someone denounced him. After only a week on the trail, he was ‘ambushed’ by a group of four armed lamas and a Tibetan official. They ordered him to turn around and said they would escort him back to Yunnan.

Dornay suspected (correctly) that the lamas had been sent to kill him, and managed to negotiate to get some of his Tibetan support party released. He set off warily on the return journey with three loyal escorts, including personal bodyguard Doci.

Over the next week’s journey back south, Dornay’s fears about the intentions of the lamas increased, especially when they were joined by a further two armed monks. His supporters urged Dornay to try escape, but he refused, knowing that he would have to leave them behind to be killed in retribution.

The armed lamas kept their rifles loaded and ready to use at all times, and tension built up to the point where one of Dornay’s helpers tried to wrestle a gun from one of them, leading to a tense standoff.

As they reached the final Cho La pass leading back in to China, Dornay ascended the trail escorted closely by two of the armed lamas. The other lamas were thought to be some way behind, but after reaching the pass - and entering Yunnan - they emerged from bushes in an ambush. They shot dead Dornay’s assistant Doci, and then turned their guns on Dornay when he went over to say a prayer over his fallen companion. He was killed by several bullets.

In the confusion, Dornay’s other two Tibetan escorts managed to flee into the woods, and then rushed down the long trail from the pass towards the Mekong river to escape the attackers.

It took them another two days to reach the safety of Deqin, after evading two other gangs of armed lamas who were on the trail, hunting for the foreign priest.

When the priests at Cizhong were informed of Dornay’s killing, they organised an armed party to return to the pass to retrieve his body and that of his assistant. Dornay was buried at Deqin, and later reinterred at his beloved Yanjing, where his grave - and the small church - remains today.

The four remaining foreign priests in the Mekong and Salween churches did not have much of a future themselves. Just a few months later in December 1949, Mao proclaimed a Peoples Republic of China in Beijing. In 1950 the priests were ordered by the new Communist authorities to pack up and leave their churches - first to be held under virtual house arrest at Weixi, then expelled to Hong Kong at the end of 1951. Some moved to Vietnam, others to Taiwan.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Tornay’s missionary colleagues started to organise a campaign for his beatification—on the grounds that he had died “in hatred of the faith”.

Almost 45 years later, Pope John Paul II recognised Maurice Tornay as a martyr of the faith and he was beatified on 16 May 1993.

The churches founded by the French and Swiss priests of the Paris Foreign Missions Society (MEP) and the Canons of the Great St Bernard endured through the decades of Communist rule and the chaos of the cultural revolution. But they have not done so well in the new era of socialism (ie capitalism) with Chinese characteristics.

When I visited Cizhong in 2004 the church and its surroundings were still very much as they appeared in the photos taken by the priests in 1930s. A small village church at the centre of a small riverside farming community comprising a handful of traditional Tibetan-style houses made of wood and natural stone. Access was by a primitive and often scary gravel road cut in to the steep hillside along the Mekong river.

Since then however, Cizhong has developed out of all recognition. The village has expanded into a town of high rise commercial buildings and apartments, partly to accomodate hundreds of Tibetan families displaced by dams built further upriver. The church remains intact but it is now blocked in by three-storey buildings on most sides. Many of these are hotels to cater to the large number of tourists now travelling up the Mekong valley thanks to the smooth new ‘scenic highway’ that was built a decade ago.

In some ways the Cizhong church is a victim of its own success - or at least its exotic legend: a little bit of old France or Switzerland in the corner of Yunnan. This is partly fuelled by the tiny vineyard planted by the missionaries to produce a modest amount of wine for their own consumption. It is still producing grapes, but cannot provide nearly enough output to meet demand for ‘Cizhong wine’ that has been popularised by media stories of its unique character due to it being produced from a now discontinued strain of vine from France. The ‘Cizhong wine’ sold in the local stores and upmarket wine resorts is produced at other vineyards that have been developed in the area.

There is still a large congregation of worshippers at Cizhong, a mix of Tibetans and Naxi people. But the priest is not local: the last time I visited, he was from Fujian. And these days the congregation is often outnumbered by tourists from all across China, crowding around the distinctive arches of the doorway to get a photo.

How have the other churches fared? The rickety hilltop church at Baihanluo, over the mountains from Cizhong, has survived and been restored to its former glory. There are several other churches in the same valley. However the beautiful old wooden church down the hill at Dimaluo was upgraded (demolished) a few years ago and replaced with a bigger concrete monstrosity.

It’s the same story with the church at Weixi and its ‘satellite’ churches along the river. The parishes are still there, but the buildings have mostly been rebuilt and sometimes relocated. There are others in places such as Chongding near Bingzhongluo in the Nujiang valley, that have retained retained some of their minor grandeur, even if the surroundings have been transformed. Another change is the tight control exerted by the government bureau for religious affairs. Prominent signs display a long lists of prohibited activities such as the participation of foreigners in any church affairs or financial support, and also a ban on children under the age of 18 attending masses or religious instruction.

As for Yanjing, that lies behind another set of restrictions because it is in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), which is closed to foreigners without a special tour permit. So just as in Tornay’s day, the foreigner will be turned away.

[I have translated the full story of the Tornay events that is reported in an 8000-word French article, in another post].

Here is part 1 of a selection of AI colourised images of the Swiss missionaries at Cizhong, Weixi and Yanjing.