3/20/2018 0 Comments March 20th, 2018During the Death March in the northern mountains of China, many Trappist monks had succombed to the brutal beatings and torture at the hands of the Chinese Communists.
In his makeshift prison cell in Mu Chia Chuang, Father Augustinus Faure (b. 1873) remained on the floor, in a heap. Originally with the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris, a master of the novices, he was much loved by others in the Community of Our Lady of Consolation. On October 18, 1947, he ate what was given to him by his tormentors. Delirium, fever, thirst soon followed. He begged for a drink of water. One of the guards mocked, “All your life you have served God, and now He is not able to give you a drop of water to drink.” Father Augustinus sighed his final, dying words, “I thirst.” VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王!
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3/19/2018 0 Comments March 19th, 2018Father Maximilan Kolbe was arrested by the German Gestapo on February 17, 1941, from his monastery in Poland, the same monastery used to shelter and feed and protect thousands of Jews.
Locked up in Pawiak Prison, he was transferred to Auschwitz on May 28, 1941, where he was renamed Prisoner 16670, and often received violent beatings. After 10 prisoners escaped, Karl Fritzsch, the deputy camp commander, ordered 10 men be starved to death, as a deterrent to others. When one of the men selected cried, "My wife! My children!" Father Maximilian offered to take his place. In the underground bunker, where the 10 men were kept, Father Maxilmilian led the others in prayers, until after two weeks of starvation and dehydration, he was the only alive. But the guards wanted the bunker, so they hastened his death with a lethel injection of carbolic acid, for which he calmly raised his left arm. Father Maxilimilian died on August 14, 1941, and his remains were cremated on August 15, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. VIVA CRISTO REY! Niech żyje Chrystus Król! 3/19/2018 0 Comments March 19th, 2018As the Communist soldiers beat and tortured the Trappist monks during the Death March in the mountains in northern China, another Trappist died.
Brother Hugo Fan (b. 1881), an acolyte, died in a village police station in Che Chia Tai in December 1947. He was never able to receive the Holy Orders of the priesthood because of his ill health. He was a native of Yu Chou Hsien, Chahar province, north of Yang Kia Ping. The Trappist monk died loyal to Christ and to Pope. VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王! 3/18/2018 0 Comments March 18th, 2018Communist soldiers grabbed Father Antonius Fan, the prior, and dragged him out to the orchard. There, they drew a rope over his chest and under his arms, which they tied behind his back. Then strung up on a tree, he dangled with his toes just a breath away from touching the ground, for three hours, until his tormentors cut him loose.
Much later, on October 13, 1947, Father Antonius (b. 1885), a native of Yu Chou Hsien, in Chahar province north of Yang Kia Ping, ate what was given to him for the evening meal. From the beginning of the Death March, despite the no-talking orders, despite the beatings, he recited vocal prayers without pause. His Ave Marias succeeded his Pater Nosters. His hands had been handcuffed behind his back, with the metal squeezed so tightly closed around his wrists that his hands and arms swelled. Then gangrene set in and attacked his flesh, baring the bones in his forearms. Despite the pain, despite the cuffs, despite the leg irons, during the march to Mu Chia Chuang three days earlier he had helped carry weaker monks to the new location. But that night of October 13, almost immediately after he ate, he complained of a violent thirst. Fever and delirium soon followed. In a few hours, he was dead. Poisoned. VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王! 3/17/2018 0 Comments March 17th, 2018How many Polish Catholics were killed by Socialists during World War II?
In his Obersalzberg Speech of August 22, 1939, National Socialist Adolf Hitler reportedly said that his troops must exterminate "without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space we need!" POLAND CENSUS POPULATION of December 9, 1931: 32,132,936 (Catholic 74.9% plus Russian Orthodox 12.5% = 87.4% of Poland's entire population) POLAND CENSUS POPULATION of February 15, 1946: 23,622,334 (a LOSS of 8,510,602, almost 30% of the entire population of Poland) VIVA CRISTO REY! Niech żyje Chrystus Król! 3/17/2018 0 Comments March 17th, 2018One of the few Europeans from Our Lady of Consolation, Father Aelredus Drost, born in 1912, in Amsterdam, had been gifted with a beautiful singing voice.
After the Communist soldiers learned of his talent, they often demanded that he entertain them with songs from his native country. Covered in filth, in chains, in the dark, in the cold, in the rain-drenched jail cell, the humble monk obeyed his captors, and the Mongolian mountains of northern China resounded with the beautiful songs of the Netherlands. In Huang Hua Kou, Father Aelredus, after all the beatings during interrogations, lost his ability to move. During the Death March, he had developed colic and grew so weak that his pace slacked behind the others, which infuriated the Communists, who clubbed him and hit him with rocks. His legs swelled until the skin split, opening sores that developed into ulcers, which, going uncared for, penetrated deeper until the white of his bones showed through. Afflicted with dysentery, he needed to go out often. But rarely given permission, he frequently soiled his trousers. His only pair, he would wash them in the bitter cold then put them back on – wet. Of all the monks, he had been the one who always knew if it were a Sunday or a feast day, and each day he recited his breviary by heart. But finally unable to do anything for himself, his brethren tried to aid him, as he slept restlessly, muttering in Dutch, his native language. At the abbey, he had been master of novices, and because of his serene, patient and sweet character, he was much loved and tenderly nursed in captivity. “Leave him alone!” shouted one of the guards. “Don’t help that foreign dog!” On December 5, 1947, Father Aelredus died. He had been the last European survivor of the Death March. Far from his family, he had been one of seven boys. Four became priests – two Trappists. VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王! 3/16/2018 0 Comments March 16th, 2018Ordained in 1958, Father Simon Jubani was arrested in 1963, while at the Abbey of Mirëdita. A political prisoner, he was in Burrel Prison for 26 years, in a 12-by-24 cell with 30 cellmates, tortured and forced to labor in the mines.
With other Catholic priests, he was released on April 13, 1989, and he wrote a memoir "Burgjet e mia," about his horrific time in prison. Dictator Enver Hoxha had outlawed religion, in 1967, and declared Albania the world's first atheist State, and on November 11, 1990, Father Simon Jubani was the first priest to openly celebrate a public Mass. VIVA CRISTO REY! RROFTE KRISHTI MBRET! 3/16/2018 0 Comments March 16th, 2018The Death March through the mountains in northern China had been deadly for the Trappist monks of Our Lady of Consolation, tortured by the Communists soldiers with their theophobic Socialist ideology of death and destruction.
When they reached Teng Chia Yu, more neared death, including Brother Bartholomeus Chin (b. 1893), one of several vocations from the Jesuit mission of Hsien Hsien, in Ho Chien, Hopei province. Inside the dark prison cell, cold, filthy, bloody, exhausted, the Trappist monk breathed his last, in September 1947. At the announcement of each death, Tui-Shih Li, the Communist leader of the Death March, could barely contain his glee. “Wonderful! We have saved one more bullet!” he cheered. After each death, four monks, escorted by weapon-ready soldiers, carried each body to where they would be forced to dump their confrere in a shallow grave, covered over with a powdering of dirt. At night, the smell of death lured the wolves and wild dogs that unearthed the decaying bodies, tearing off legs and arms, gnawing on the flesh and muscle. What wasn’t devoured was left lying on the ground, visible. Only after the villagers of Teng Chia Yu complained to the Communists were the dead reburied, with the mauled remains re-interred in a grave slightly deeper, or just deep enough. VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王! 3/15/2018 0 Comments March 15th, 2018Zef Pllumi, only 22, was arrested on December 14, 1946, by the Albanian Communist regime, after accused of being the personal secretary of Franciscan Father Anton Harapi.
After spending three years in prisons and extermination camps, he was released in 1949, ordained in 1956, and rearrested in 1967, the same year dictator Enver Hoxha banned religion and declared Albania the world's first atheist State. Father Zef Pllumi remained in prison for more than two decades, until his release, on April 11, 1989. Faithful to Christ and to Pope, he returned to the religious life and wrote "Live to Tell: A True Story of Religious Persecution in Communist Albania" before his death, in 2007. VIVA CRISTO REY! RROFTE KRISHTI MBRET! 3/15/2018 0 Comments March 15th, 2018Trappist Brother Malachi Chao did not survive the Death March through the mountains in northern China, after suffering torture at the hands and whips and fists and ropes and chains of the Communist soldiers with their theophobic Socialist ideology of death and destruction.
On November 1, 1947, All Saints Day, Brother Malachi Chao died a slow, agonizing death, in the darkness of his cell, faithful to Christ and Pope. VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王! 3/15/2018 0 Comments March 15th, 2018Father Klement Miraj (1882-1956) was falsely accused by the Albanian Communists of maintaining links with the German National Socialists during the war.
During World War II, the newly formed Albanian #Communist Party had slyly and slowly taken control of the Albanian government until they grabbed control of the country, in November of 1944. Enver Hoxha became the Party's first secretary, on November 8, 1944, and he reigned over a brutal regime, which targeted intellectuals and members of the Catholic Church, especially priests. Communism, which posed and poses a global danger, manipulates the masses with its ideology of Socialism in which lawlessness becomes the law, so that the masses are controlled by fear. Father Miraj was arrested in 1952 and sentenced to 20 years in prison and forced labor. He died in Burrel Prison on November 21, 1956. VIVA CRISTO REY 3/13/2018 0 Comments March 13th, 2018Trappist Father Bonaventura Chao did not survive the Death March through the mountains in northern China, after suffering torture at the hands and whips and fists and ropes and chains of the #Communist soldiers with their theophobic Socialist ideology of death and destruction.
Father Bonaventura Chao died, on December 8, 1947, after the wounds caused by the handcuffs became infected and putrefied, exposing the bones in his forearms. Born, in 1902, in Hopei province’s mountainous area of Ching Shui, near the abbey, in the apostolic vicariate of Peking, he was Intelligent and pious and had taught Latin in the abbey. Musical, he was the official cantor of the monastic choir that he had led to angelic heights. The Trappist priest was buried with Father Odilius Chang and another, who also succumbed to the brutal troture, their bodies to be forever entwined in a shallow grave, a trench that the Communist soldiers had used as a latrine. VIVA CRISTO REY! 3/13/2018 1 Comment ALBANIAN PRISON CAMPS1951 CIA DOCUMENT: REVEALS DETAILS OF ALBANIAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS
In addition to 18 prisons, there are 12 known concentration camps in Albania, located in Tepelete, Beden Maliq, Berat, Vrma Suti, Tropoje, Kruje, Vilijas, [Vile? Vilash?], Shkoder, Himare, Korce, and Isul. There are 3,600 internees in the Tepelene camp, which was established in the beginning of 1949 and is the oldest and largest in Albania, and 2,000 in the Beden camp in Kavaje. About 70 percent of the internees in Tepelene are women and children. The highest death rate is among the children. The following [Xherxhe?] from Koplik, the small child of Zef Mirasa from Bajze, the year-old son of Fran Hasa from Bajze, two children of Prenash Djerdje [Xherzhe?] from Ljohe, and the three children of Djuste [Xhuste?] Goraj, who were 10 years, 6 years, and 6 months old. The camp commandant is Lt. Dzafar [Xhafar?] Pegaci. He is an ignorant villain and tyrant who has forcibly raped young and pretty women who have refused to become intimate with him. He loves to see children die. The internees in the Tepelene camp sleep in four rows of double-deck wooden beds. Families are not separated. The building has no garret [no insulation between the ceiling and roof?]. The camp provides a wooden bed and a small piece of soap monthly. The daily food consists of tea for breakfast and warm broth and 650 grams of bread for lunch and dinner. No bedding of any kind, clothing, footwear, or other food is furnished. Nothing additional is given to even youngest children. It is difficult to maintain cleanliness in the camp, for internees are not given brooms but must clean with branches. The camp is infested with vermin. An excessive number of internees are ill because of poor food, filth, vermin and hard physical labor; tuberculosis is a very widespread disease. Many die because of illness; most deaths are among children and adult males. The children die because of low resistance to disease and adult males because of exhaustion from slave labor. The camp does not have a regular doctor. One doctor makes visits irregularly, another comes once monthly or once weekly and then only examines the dead. Only those who are at the point of death are sent to the hospital is Gjinokaster. There is no emergency medical service. More than 50 persons died in the first half of 1951. Both males and females in the camp work without pay throughout the years, in all kinds of weather, even on Sundays. They work on the railroad at Elbasan and on constructing the railroad in Vlore. They cut wood in the mountains near Tepelene and do various contruction jobs in the camp itself. Work quotas are set. In forestry, the quota calls for the cutting and stacking of cubic meter of wood [per word day?]. A man's job is finished only when his quota is fulfilled, which means that the weak must work longer hours, including at night. The Albanian concentration camps in Isul, on the Fort's Palermos peninsula, and Cepi Panormos are old Turkish fortresses with very thick walls and small windows. The interiors, including the floors, are of stone. In the semidarkness of the Isul fortress, internees are exposed to the elements (walls are rain soaked and constantly damp), and many become sick, especially with eye trouble. Work lasts from 12 to 16 hours, and the guards carry whips. The internees generally do not get fresh water but must drink from a ditch, which is also used as a urinal and a footbath. Up to November 1950, there were 200 Albanians, four Yugoslavs, two Italians, and one Greek in the camp. For some unknown reason, they were all transferred to Tepelene. It is not known what is in the fortress now. There is considerable sickness in the Beden camp, located in a swamp in Kavaje. Tuberculosis is the most prevalent disease. The camp commandant has established special tuberculosis brigades of 80 men each, who are forced to work, although many of them frequently die while at work. Iso Metot from Shkoder died in this manner. This is all part of a deliberate plan, as was shown in a lecture given by the camp commandant. He said internees were in the camp as enemies of the government and must die there. In Albania, arrests are made without warrants; jail sentences are given without trial. Camp inmates are not separated into two categories [criminal and political prisoners], for death is the ultimate end for all. Slightly more than 2 years ago, Jak Marko, a policeman, killed Zef Kolj Prencija, president of the youth organization for the Burbullush region. The following day, Metus Bogo, a state security officer from Shkoder, praised the killer at a people's meeting. The reason given for the killing was the victim's sympathy toward Yugoslavia. The authorities also killed Sokola Bajrama, member of the Albanian Communist Party, for saying at a party meeting that all of the clamor against Yugoslavia was untrue. -- Z. Z. 3/12/2018 0 Comments March 12th, 2018The Death March through the mountains in northern China had been deadly for the Trappist monks, tortured by the #Communists soldiers with their theophobic Socialist ideology of death and destruction.
One more neared death. Inside his dark prison cell, cold, filthy, bloody, exhausted, Father Odilius Chang (b. 1897), from the province of Chilin (old form of Kirin) breathed his last, on December 7, 1947. The priest-monk had embodied the spirit of Saint Benedict: contemplation and piety. At the abbey of Our Lady of Consolation, he had been confessor and director of the oblates and postulants, and on all first Fridays, he always had directed a retreat and preached a conference. Pious, modest, reserved and humble, Father Odilius was considered an extraordinary preacher. With a burning zeal, his words, with a simple elegance, flowed like fire from his heart into the hearts of his listeners, encouraging many vocations. During the Death March and all that ensued, he had never complained. Father Odilius was buried with two fellow Trappists, who also succumbed to the brutal troture, their bodies to be forever entwined in a shallow grave, a trench that the Communist soldiers had used as a latrine. VIVA CRISTO REY! 3/11/2018 0 Comments March 11th, 2018As Bishop Ernest Çoba lay helpless on his hospital bed in Tirana Prison, Albanian prison authorities injected an unknown drug into his veins, and very shortly after, the bishop died, on January 7, 1980.
Accused of being a spy for the Vaitcan, the bishop had been arrested in 1976, sentenced to 25 years in prison and suffered much torture in prison at the hands of the #Communists with their theophobic Socialist ideology of death and destruction VIVA CRISTO REY! 3/10/2018 0 Comments March 10th, 2018Father Chrysostomus Chang plumbed the depths of his human will for a supernatural strength. With only a few minutes remaining of his life in the material world, he lifted his thoughts to the spiritual. Through screams from the mob, he addressed his confreres at his side one last time, to prepare them not for death, but for life, everlasting life.
“We’re going to die for God. Let us lift our hearts one more time, in offering our total beings,” he said. Helpless, the six Trappist monks stood handcuffed and chained on a makeshift platform, targets of a frenzied hatred that surged toward them. The blood-encrusted, lice-infested men, wearing rags caked in their own filth, had nowhere to run, no one to help them. After six months of mind-bending interrogations and body-rending torture, it was over. It was all over. The verdict had just been read by a Chinese Communist officer: Death. To be carried out immediately. Hundreds of crazed peasants, with fists raised, with contorted faces, with spit-covered lips, screamed rehearsed slogans of approval for the approaching slaughter. Executioners – reliable Party henchmen – rushed to ready their rifles to exterminate the Roman Catholic monks, believers in the superstitious cult, lovers of the God on the Cross imported from the Imperialist West. And so it happened on January 28, 1948, in the dead of winter in Pan Pu, an unmapped village, a frigid heathen hell in the Mongolian mountains, somewhere in the frost-covered north of the Republic of China. Just over the ridge from the pandemonium staged by the soulless Chinese Communists – believers in the materialistic cult, lovers of the god of death and destruction – lay the charred ruins of Our Lady of Consolation, the once-majestic abbey the monks had called home. Jostled in the madness, the monks fell to their knees. With their swollen hands tied and chained behind their backs, they couldn’t even cross themselves – In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost – a final time. The death squad – Communist soldiers at the ready – loaded their rifles with fresh rounds of ammo. Shots rang out. One, then the next, followed by the next, the monks collapsed upon the blood-splashed, frozen ground. Their lifeless bodies dragged to a nearby sewage ditch and dumped into a heap, one on top of the other. Alerted by the shots, wild dogs, roaming the village’s dirt roads, scavenging for scraps, hurried over to the bodies to investigate. Sniffing, they lapped up the warm blood, steaming in the icy air. It was all over. Our Lady of Consolation was no more. VIVA CRISTO REY! Father Ejëll Kovaçi was arrested, charged with the trumped-up charges of foreign espionage and persecuted by the Communists with their theophobic Socialist ideology of death and destruction.
During World War II, the newly formed Albanian Communist Party had slyly and slowly taken control of the Albanian government until they grabbed control of the country, in November of 1944. Enver Hoxha became the Party's first secretary, on November 8, 1944, and he reigned over a brutal regime, which targeted intellectuals and members of the Catholic Church, especially priests. Father Ejëll Kovaçi was sentenced to death and shot, on November 13, 1958. VIVA CRISTO REY! RROFTE KRISHTI MBRET! As long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me. – Matthew 25:40 REPORTER’S NOTE: For the past several years, as attacks against the Catholic Church have accelerated in an increasingly Socialist world, news sources have published and broadcast sensationalized pieces about dead babies interred in underground chambers on Catholic estates, including Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home, in #Tuam, Ireland, and #Smyllum Park Orphanage, in Lanark, Scotland. With anti-Catholic verbiage, reporters ran with the pieces – seemingly never letting facts get in the way of a good story – maligning priests and nuns with vicious tales and innuendo of abuse and torture, elaborated and hyperbolized with words such as horror, notorious, gruesome, grim and brutal. But in the reports, there was something eerily familiar. Similar accounts can be found in the historical works that fill volumes of aging, yellowing pages pulled from the shelves. For more than 60 years ago, the same sort of false accusations were launched against Catholic missionaries in the People’s Republic of China after the #Communist takeover. Here’s what happened… TMM TO READ MORE: CARTOON TRANSLATION:
HANGING SIGN: "Relief for poor and helpless abandoned babies." NUN’S HEADPIECE: "Mercy." WALL SIGN: "The Sisters of the Immaculate Conception Society, from Canada, Holy Infant Foundling Home, of Canton." BELOW BABIES: "2,116 babies have been killed since the liberation of Canton." 3/9/2018 0 Comments VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王!At Teng Chia Yu, Father Alphonsus L’Heureux (b. 1894) had been separated from his confreres. A missionary with the Society of Jesus, he switched to the Trappist monastery late in life. A French Canadian, born in Coaticook, Quebec, he had once loved intensely a beautiful girl, Denise Dupuis, who had taught him how to folk dance. But he had held back his signs of affection, for he knew when it came time to make a decision, he would choose God.
Strong in body and will, when he worked in the fields he put all his heart and soul into it, and he could do the same work in one afternoon that three Chinese men did in two days. Strong in faith and will, as soon as he returned from the fields, without fail, he headed straight to the church for the Stations of the Cross, then kneeled before the altar of the Sacred Heart for contemplation. Every day, he went to the Sacrament of Penance. With that strength of will, he faced his interrogators and their taunts during the Death March. “Ha! If He’s a God who does not care to help you, or one who cannot help you, you can have Him,” guards taunted. “For our part, we don’t believe in God.” Backed with the scholarship of the pre-Vatican II Jesuits, Father Alphonsus refuted vigorously their arguments, for which he was brutally tortured, until he could only lie on the ground, in solitary confinement, barely alive, without a blanket or even a rag to cover his body in the cold. Suffering from dysentery, his feces, like white mucus, encrusted his trousers that were never removed or cleaned. When he lay dying, his hands, bound with steel wire behind his back since the trial on July 23, 1947, were finally freed. But the wrists had swelled, nearly unrecognizable with red, gaping wounds. Each resembled an opened, toothless mouth, screaming. On Friday, September 12, 1947, the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary, rain poured steadily in the village of Teng Chia Yu. Autumn, the most beautiful season in the Mongolian mountains, displayed the explosion of blood red from the Chinese maples dotting the landscape on the slopes. Father Alphonsus called out from his cell. Close by, in Father Sebastianus Pien’s cell, a young Red soldier, less cruel than the others, heard, but couldn’t understand the priest’s cries. “That foreigner is calling out. Go, and see what he wants,” the soldier told Father Sebastianus Pien, who approached and kneeled at the side of the dying priest. “I want this,” he said, raising his filthy, wounded right hand and painfully tracing with it the sign of the cross. Father Alphonsus wanted to make his confession. From his spot on the bare floor, in his soiled trousers, crawling with lice, he whispered his confession, and as he said his Act of Contrition, Father Sebastianus pronounced the absolution. “Amen,” Father Alphonsus said, himself, then asked for a cup of water. Between sips, he looked up and smiled. “In a short time, I will go to Heaven,” he said. “We will meet again in Heaven, then,” Father Sebastianus answered. “I shall die tomorrow – Mary’s day. I’ll be very happy to die. In Heaven, I shall pray for all of you. Be brave.” The young, Red soldier approached Father Alphonsus and said, “Old Father, are you still alive?” “I will die soon. I thank you for all you have done for me. You have been very good to me.” The next morning, Saturday, September 13, 1947, the cook brought food for Father Alphonsus. As he opened the door, he called to the priest. But there was no answer. When he touched the cold body, he knew he was dead. The young, Red soldier, less cruel than the others, approached the monks. In a reverential whisper, he described the priest’s death. “That man died very peacefully. He looked just like the other man in your figure-10 frame at Yang Kia Ping.” Instantly, the monks understood the profound meaning. In written Chinese, the character for the number 10 is an upright cross, which is referred to as a figure-10 frame. At Yang Kia Ping, where their abbey stood, the soldier had seen a crucifix. It was true. Brother Marcellus Chang, Father Sebastianus Pien and two other monks were ordered to bury the body of Father Alphonsus. As Brother Marcellus looked down, he saw that his dead confrere’s legs were crossed, with his shrunken right foot resting above the left. His hands, with bones sticking out at the wrists, were folded atop his breast. Upon his face, a peaceful, serene beauty. Looking upon the smiling face, Father Sebastianus thought, He does not look like a corpse, at all. The monks placed the body of Father Alphonsus upon a stretcher. Lifting the bier, the monks genuflected, praying in their hearts as they walked to a nearby mountain slope, where the reticent gravediggers began their sorrowful task far from the abbey, where they should have been celebrating the eternal life with the austere beauty of a Trappist burial. VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王! On the slope of Rozafat Castle, Bishop Gjergj Volaj celebrated a Mass on a feast day of Our Lady, in Shkodra, Albania.
In his sermon, his last sermon, he spoke of the Catholic Church and the difficult times She faced and called for the faithful to trust in God. Not long after, he was arrested by the revolutionary Communists with their atheistic Socialist ideology of death and destruction. Accused of counterrevolutionary activities, he was cruelly tortured, ordered to be exterminated and was shot to death, on February 3, 1947. VIVA CRISTO REY! RROFTE KRISHTI MBRET! 3/8/2018 0 Comments VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王!Lagging behind in the Death March, Trappist Brother Damianus Huang finally reached the village. With his arms bound behind his back, he could only crawl forward on his knees. Years earlier, he had suffered frostbite on his feet and, subsequently, walked with great difficulty. After his feet gave out on the march, he fell to his knees and could only drag himself along. The soldiers whipped him, kicked him, punched him, then threw him into a pigsty alongside the pigs.
Later, Brother Damianus was rounded up with five other monks. “You are going to be freed,” the soldiers told them. The six monks were taken to Pan Pu, just a short distance from Our Lady of Consolation. In the village, large-character posters displayed on the walls announced a meeting of the People’s Court. The names of the monks had been written in red ink – a symbol of death. Twice the men were hauled before a People’s Court. Before a multitude, the manacled, handcuffed monks were accused. They had to listen to the wild, brutal screams of false accusations against the abbey and against themselves. They denied the guilt. They refused to surrender. At the second trial, the death order was delivered. Helpless, the six Trappist monks stood handcuffed and chained on a makeshift platform, targets of a frenzied hatred that surged toward them. The blood-encrusted, lice-infested men, wearing rags caked in their own filth, had nowhere to run, no one to help them. After six months of mind-bending interrogations and body-rending torture, it was over. It was all over. The verdict had just been read by a Chinese Communist officer: Death. To be carried out immediately. Hundreds of crazed peasants, with fists raised, with contorted faces, with spit-covered lips, screamed rehearsed slogans of approval for the approaching slaughter. Executioners – reliable Party henchmen – rushed to ready their rifles to exterminate the Roman Catholic monks, believers in the superstitious cult, lovers of the God on the Cross imported from the Imperialist West. And so it happened on January 28, 1948, in the dead of winter in Pan Pu, an unmapped village, a frigid heathen hell in the Mongolian mountains, somewhere in the frost-covered north of the Republic of China. Just over the ridge from the pandemonium staged by the soulless Chinese Communists – believers in the materialistic cult, lovers of the god of death and destruction – lay the charred ruins of Our Lady of Consolation, the once-majestic abbey the monks had called home. Jostled in the madness, Brother Damianus and the other monks fell to their knees. With their swollen hands tied and chained behind their backs, they couldn’t even cross themselves – In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost – a final time. The death squad – Communist soldiers at the ready – loaded their rifles with fresh rounds of ammo. Shots rang out. One, then the next, followed by the next, the monks collapsed upon the blood-splashed, frozen ground. Their lifeless bodies, dragged to a nearby sewage ditch and dumped into a heap, one on top of the other. Alerted by the shots, wild dogs, roaming the village’s dirt roads, scavenging for scraps, hurried over to the bodies to investigate. Sniffing, they lapped up the warm blood, steaming in the icy air. Brother Damianus remained faithful to Christ to the very end. VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王! Charged with absurd counterrevolutionary allegations, 39 Catholic priests and intellectuals, chained together, were publicly tried, on January 30, 1946, in the Rozafat Cinema, in Shkoder.
One of the many witnesses to speak on behalf of the innocence of the Catholic defendants, was Luigj Pici, vice-president of the Democratic Front. After his testimony, Luigj Pici was removed from his office and, without a trial, was executed by gunshot by the Communists, with their theophobic Socialist ideology of death and destruction. VIVA CRISTO REY! RROFTE KRISHTI MBRET! 3/7/2018 0 Comments VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王!By the time the Trappist monks on the Death March arrived in Teng Chia Yu, on September 8, 1947, those who carried the litter of Father Stephanus Maury (b. 1886) knew that the priest, originally a French Lazarist with the Congregation of the Mission, didn’t have long to live.
At some point he had felt death approaching and signaled that he wanted to make his last confession. In a narrow bend along the path, Father Sebastianus Pien, carrying the right front corner of the litter, nodded for others to delay on a turn. There, he bent over, listened to the dying man’s final words and pronounced absolution over the victim of Chinese Communists with their theophobic Socialist ideology of death and destruction. VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王! |
AuthorTHERESA MARIE MOREAU is an award-winning reporter who covers Catholicism and Communism. Archives
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