French Roman Catholic missionaries

Robert de Besange, SJ (15 March 1878 – 10 September 1946), also known as Jacquinot de Besange and in China as Rao Jia-ju (Chinese: 饶家驹), was a French Jesuit who set up a successful model of safety zones that saved over half-a-million Chinese people during the Second Sino-Japanese War.Jacquinot de Besange's family originates from aristocratic lineages in Lorraine, in northeastern France. He arrived in China in 1913 as a missionary and served the Portuguese congregation at the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Hongkou. He also served as a chaplain to the Shanghai Volunteer Corps. He had lost his right arm in an explosion while conducting chemistry experiments in his youth, and was known as the "one-armed priest."
De Besange acted as president of the China International Famine Relief Commission during the 1932 Battle of Shanghai, where his relief work for refugees, including negotiating a four-hour truce between the Chinese and the Japanese armies to allow the evacuation of civilians and casualties from the war zone, made him a household name in Shanghai.
The "de Besange model" began with the Shanghai Safety Zone (南市难民区, "Nanshi Refugee Zone"), or "Jacquinot de Besange Safe Zone", in 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It was a demilitarised zone for Chinese civilians located in a part of the Old City of Shanghai that was adjacent to the Shanghai French Concession. The demilitarised zone was respected by both sides of the war and by the concession authorities. It was administered by an international committee composed of representatives of the American, British, and French communities and policed by the Chinese police. The zone was credited with saving the lives of thousands of Chinese residents between 1937 and 1940, when it was abolished after de Besange left Shanghai. Aside from setting up the Safety Zone, de Besange was also responsible for arranging for refugee camps to be set up in the Tu-seh-weh Orphanage and the Fuh Tan College to shelter refugees fleeing the war zone.Following the example of de Besange in Shanghai, the foreigners in Nanjing created the Nanking Safety Zone (南京安全区), managed by the International Committee for the Nanjing Safety Zone and led by the German businessman John Rabe. The same model also inspired the Hankou Safety Zone, the Zhangzhou Safety Zone, and the Shenzhen Safety Zone.
His work is acknowledged in the Protocols and Commentaries to the 1949 Geneva Convention. A film of his life and work, Jacquinot: A Forgotten Hero directed by Krzysztof Zanussi, was featured in the 2009 Shanghai International Film Festival.On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the events, a memorial stone was unveiled in the Shanghai City God Temple in December 2017.

Georges Guibert (1915 – 1997) was a French Roman Catholic missionary in Senegal and Réunion. He was consecrated a bishop by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

Jean-Jérôme Adam (8 June 1904 – 11 July 1981) was the French Roman Catholic archbishop of Libreville, Gabon, and an accomplished linguist who studied several of the languages of Gabon.
He was born at Wittenheim in Alsace and educated in the seminaries of the Holy Ghost Fathers. He arrived in Gabon on 29 September 1929, and spent the next 18 years as a missionary in the Haut-Ogooué Province. During that time he prepared grammars for the Mbédé, Ndumu, and Duma languages.
In 1947, Adam was appointed Vicar Apostolic of Libreville and bishop of the titular see of Rhinocorura; he became bishop of Libreville when it was elevated to a diocese in 1955, and he was made archbishop of the see in 1958. He retired in 1969 and moved to Franceville, where he died in 1981.

Marie-Clément Rodier, C.S.Sp. (French pronunciation: [maʁiklemɑ̃ ʁɔdje]; born Vital Rodier; 1839–1904) was a French missionary brother in Algeria. He is credited with creating the clementine variety of mandarin orange in 1902.
Rodier was born 25 May 1839 as Vital Rodier in Malvieille, near to Chambon-sur-Dolore, France. Originally a member of the Brothers of the Annunciation at Misserghin in Algeria, he helped to run an orphanage. Brother Marie-Clément worked with the orphanage's citrus trees, and made grafts from an uncultivated tree that had grown among some thorn bushes in the orchard. This graft resulted in the clementine, which was named in honor of its creator.Brother Marie-Clément's new variety was "a species of mandarin, which won the admiration of connoisseurs and which the orphans christened the Clementine. It was neither a mandarin tree nor an orange tree. Its fruit was redder than a mandarin and had a delicious taste and, moreover, it had no pith".Brother Marie-Clément became a brother in the Congregation of the Holy Spirit after the Brothers of the Annunciation were authorized to join that order in 1903. He died in 1904.
In 2010, a building on the campus of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was named Clement Hall in honor of Brother Marie-Clément.