The great majority of candidates were from rural origins, from this remote coutryside where often refractory priests have kept alive a spirit of resistance and the practice of clandestinity.

When the Foreign Missions Seminary was re-opened in 1815, the young people who were applying practically all belonged to that tradition. A few years later, the Propagation of the Faith began reaching the smallest parishes with its publicity. As the ranks of the Diocesan Clergy were being reconstituted, the most adventurous among its members turned towards the Missions, which became a major outlet for the disappointments and enthusiasm of the French Church.

Born in usually very devout but not very well-off families, who often had trouble paying for their studies, many candidate Missionaries came up against opposition from their relatives when they let them know about their intentions. The separation from their families, which was radical and final, was a particularly painful ordeal for all those involved, and even dramatic for those who had decided to run away secretely, without saying farewell, when their relatives’ opposition was too inflexible.

Nevertheless, whenever this separation was accepted, or when, as time went by, the sacrifice was consumed, very strong links subsisted between the Missionaries isolated at the other end of the world and their communities of origin: letter exchanges which transited through the Paris Seminary and the Asian Procures, union through prayer and especially, on the part of Missionaries, pressing calls to vocations towards their companions still remaining behind at home.

In this respect, the Martyrs were the best recruiters. Each of their deaths generally triggered several departures by new Missionaries. Thus certain Dioceses become real breeding-grounds for Missionaries and Martyrs, such as that of Besançon (Saint Isidore Gagelin, Joseph Marchand, François Néron and Étienne Cuenot) or Poitiers (Saint Jean-Charles Cornay and Saint Théophane Vénard). Conversely, in Dioceses with weak missionary recruitments such as that of Digne, the death of a single Martyr - Saint Jacques Chastan in 1839 - set off an exceptional wave of ten departures in the years following. The recent canonizations of twenty-three Missionaries martyrized in Vietnam, China and Korea, have reinforced the spiritual links between their Dioceses of origin and the countries of their mission, links that materialized themselves through growing numbers of pilgimages by Asians coming to France, and by French people leaving for Asia.