Saint Étienne Théodore Cuenot was born on February 8, 1802, in the village of Le Bélieu, Diocese of Besançon, France. Following the French Revolution of 1789, when the local church was closed, his parents secretly took him to be baptized in a rice storage shed near their home.

His family had once been well-off, but due to war, crop failures, and epidemics, their financial situation deteriorated. In the winter of 1816, he had to drop out of school. Seeing this hardship, his mother took her own wedding dress and had it altered into a cloak for him. Étienne promised: “The day I become a priest, I will make a dress just as fine for you.”

On July 23, 1817, he entered the seminary of the Paris Foreign Missions Society and was ordained a priest on September 24, 1825.

In 1828, he departed from Bordeaux by ship to Macau, then traveled to Đàng Ngoài (Tonkin). After an 83-day overland journey, he arrived in Đàng Trong (Cochinchina), where he studied Vietnamese at the Lái Thiêu Seminary and adopted the Vietnamese name Trí.

During his first four years of missionary work, he suffered severely from tuberculosis, nearly to the point of death. When anti-Catholic persecution intensified in 1833, he sought refuge in Siam (Thailand) and later Hạ Châu (Singapore). On May 3, 1835, in Penang, he was consecrated Coadjutor Bishop of Đàng Trong by Bishop Jean Taberd – Từ.

He then returned to Đàng Trong, changed his name to Thể, and lived in hiding in An Ngãi (Quảng Nam), later moving to the Catholic community of Gò Thị.

As shepherd of the local Church, recognizing the immense pastoral needs, he convened the Gò Thị Synod in August 1841 to regulate sacramental life, train local clergy, and encourage sending seminarians to the Penang Seminary.

He proposed dividing the Đàng Trong Vicariate into two: Tây Đàng Trong (Saigon) and Đông Đàng Trong (Quy Nhơn); in 1850, he further requested the creation of Bắc Đàng Trong (Huế), entrusted to Bishop François Pellerin – Phan.

In 1854, as persecution spread, he resolved to remain in place while advising priests and seminarians to retreat to southern regions to safeguard the Church’s future. In a letter sent to Paris, he wrote: “The dangers I faced in 1854 surpassed all that I had endured throughout the previous 22 years of persecution.”

On Sunday, October 27, 1861, after celebrating Mass at the home of Mrs. Maria Mađalêna Huỳnh Thị Lưu in Gò Bồi, soldiers surrounded the village. Bishop Cuenot and two catechists, Mr. Tuyên and Mr. Nghiêm, hid in an underground shelter. However, because liturgical items remained on the altar, the soldiers became suspicious and interrogated everyone—Mrs. Lưu was beaten with 17 lashes.

After two days and one night in the shelter, suffering from thirst and seeing villagers punished unjustly, the Bishop decided to surrender himself. He was bound, placed in a cage, and escorted to Bình Định along with the two catechists and Mrs. Lưu.

On November 14, 1861, he died in prison from illness during the reign of Emperor Tự Đức. A decree from the Huế imperial court recorded: “The man named Thể… has died in prison due to illness. Nevertheless, the body must still be cast into the river.”

Local officials carried out the order: they exhumed his body—still intact—placed it in a bamboo basket, and set it adrift in the river near the village of Phong.

Bishop Étienne Théodore Cuenot – Thể was beatified on May 2, 1909, and canonized on June 19, 1988.