Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
OFM Cap Lahore
Lahore (Fides News Agency) – As the feast of St. Francis of Assisi approaches, during the eighth centenary of his death (1226–2026), the Catholic community of Mariamabad village, in Pakistan’s Punjab Province, is looking back at its history and once again entrusts the journey of the mission to the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the “City of Mary”, one of the most significant centres of Catholic presence in Pakistan, the memory of the Belgian Capuchin missionaries remains particularly alive in the story of Father Frank Van Butsele, the friar who gave his life to the people of Punjab and was murdered in the church in Mariamabad in 1953, at just 40 years of age, in the very place where he had carried out his ministry.
Mariamabad, now home to Pakistan’s National Marian Shrine, was established at the end of the nineteenth century through the work of Flemish Capuchins. In 1892, the Belgian Capuchin Bishop Emmanuel Van Den Bosch purchased some 150 acres of land to provide poor Christian families, who were subjected to discrimination, with a home and an opportunity for a new beginning. In January 1893, the first three Christian families moved there, accompanied by Franciscan missionaries, to the land that would later be called “Maryabad”, the “City of Mary”. Father Felix van de Putte, who arrived in 1896, promoted its agricultural, social and religious development and oversaw the construction of the church of Saint Mary and Saint Joseph, which was consecrated in 1898.
Father Frank Van Butsele, born in Ronse, Belgium, in 1913, is part of this long history. He joined the Capuchins in 1930 and was ordained a priest in 1937. He devoted some fifteen years to missionary work in the Indian subcontinent. He served in Amritsar (then in India) and later in the newly established Pakistan after the "partition." Capuchin historical sources remember him as a man of faith and charity, deeply devoted to the Virgin Mary, closely attached to the people and to his mission, and committed to catechesis, the formation of catechists and pastoral care of the communities. In Mariamabad (as the place would later be renamed), he assumed responsibility for the mission and dedicated himself to pastoral ministry, development, the spread of Marian devotion and the human and social advancement of Catholic families.
His name became particularly associated with the origins of the Marian pilgrimage tradition. In 1949, a few years before his death, Father Frank helped transform the church of Mariamabad into a centre of Marian devotion and launched the annual pilgrimage on 8 September, the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. That intuition has over time become one of the most significant expressions of the Catholic faith in Pakistan. Even today, the shrine attracts hundreds of thousands of pilgrims every year and also serves as a place of encounter, dialogue and prayer between Christians and Muslims (see Fides, 4/9/2026).
Father Frank died on 2 November 1953, inside his church in Mariamabad. He was killed with a dagger by a man named Diwan Masih (whom he had also helped), amid a climate of profound instability, six years after the birth of Pakistan and in a region still marked by the deep divisions left by the 1947 Partition between India and Pakistan, which had brought mass migrations and violence among religious communities. He was killed in the church, in front of his parishioners, while he was praying.
His death did not bring the mission begun by the Franciscans to an end; rather, it strengthened its history.
The sacrifice of Father Frank, who was killed as an innocent man, has become part of the community’s memory as an integral part of the mission’s history. The presence of European missionaries became a source for the emergence of local vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life, thus contributing to the growth of the local Church. The Capuchin mission sought to accompany the poor and marginalized through the proclamation of the Gospel, while also building communities, schools and social initiatives, and promoting the dignity of every person.
In Mariamabad, this legacy continues today before the statue of the Virgin Mary. The shrine, born from the mission of the Belgian Capuchins, has become a place where Christians and people of other faiths gather to entrust their concerns and hopes to Mary. It is here that the Church in Pakistan remembers Father Frank, who is buried in the cemetery in Mariamabad, on the eve of the feast of St. Francis: not only as a figure from the past, but as a gift from the Lord within a missionary history that continues to unfold. The seed planted by those missionaries continues to bear fruit in the Catholic community of Pakistan.
Today’s mission is entrusted to Mary, to whom Mariamabad has been consecrated since its beginnings. More than seventy years after Father Frank’s death, the “City of Mary” continues to cherish the memory of its missionaries while looking ahead with hope and blessing the lives of the faithful in the “Land of the Pure”.
(PA) (Fides News Agency, 1/10/2026)
