April 05th, 2018

Having endured the Death March at the brutal hands of the Chinese Communists, Brother Ireneus Wang (born 1884) could go no farther and died on December 5, 1947, at Wo Yang Tai.
Blood poisoning was the cause of death, a result of the festering wounds in his hands, which had been tied with wire by his torturers, the Communist soldiers.
A native of Yu Chou Hsien, Chahar province, his specialty had been in viticulture – growing grapes, which he had taught himself. He also worked miracles with the apricot trees dotting the ravines.
Both crops had added economically to the financially strapped abbey of Our Lady of Consolation, in the mountains of northern China.
Apricots, a stone fruit, each had an edible nut inside, which the monks marketed, after they had – during the long winter months – patiently cracked open the stones and extracted the nuts. Not ones to waste, the monks burned the bits of stone for fuel in the calefactory, the common room in the cloister where they warmed themselves in the bitter winters.
VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王!