François Pallu

François Pallu, MEP (1626–1684) was a French bishop. He was a founding member of the Paris Foreign Missions Society and became a missionary in Asia.

Born in Tours, now in Indre-et-Loire, Pallu was recruited by Alexander de Rhodes, SJ, as a secular clergy volunteer to become a missionary in Asia, together with Pierre Lambert de la Motte and Ignace Cotolendi. These were sent to the Far East as Apostolic vicars.

In 1658 Mgr Pallu became Bishop of Heliopolis, and Vicar apostolic of Tonkin, Laos, and five provinces of southwest China. The three bishops left France (1660–62) to go to their respective missions, and crossed Persia and India on foot, since Portugal would have refused to take non-Padroado missionaries by ship, and the Dutch and the English refused to take Catholic missionaries. Mgr Lambert left Marseilles on 26 November 1660, and reached Mergui in Siam 18 months later. Mgr Pallu with nine associates left on 3 January 1662. He joined Mgr Lambert in the capital of Siam Ayutthaya after 24 months overland, but Mgr Cotolendi died upon arrival in India on 6 August 1662.

With Lambert, Pallu founded in 1665-66 the general seminary in Ayutthaya, Siam (the Seminary of Saint Joseph, at the origin of the College General now in Penang, Malaysia).

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