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3/6/2018 0 Comments VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王!Brutalized and humiliated, the Trappist monks of Our Lady of Consolation lacked food, they lacked clothing, but there was no lack of beatings from the Reds. Some of the Trappists, so old and so weak, could not walk another step on their own, so the strongest among them picked up along the way a few small trees and branches, which they fixed into litters to carry their fallen confreres.
Along the way, on the night of September 6, somewhere in the district of La Hsun Hsien, those carrying the litter of Father Guglielmus Cambourieu slipped and lost their grip. The old priest, originally with the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris, tumbled onto the ground, where he bashed his head against a rock. Although bleeding profusely, his gaping wound went undetected in the black night, until the marchers stopped in the little village of Ma Lai Tsun, high in the mountains of Hopei province. In the dark, last rites were secretly administered, with urgency, and Father Guglielmus (b. 1874) died shortly after. He had been the one who had predicted during their show trial in the church by the Communists that they were going to die martyrs. Without ceremony, he was quickly buried, and the marchers continued. The missionary would never return to his native homeland of Auvergne, France. VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王! As a Catholic priest, Monsignor Nikoll Tusha was persecuted by 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. Not long after Albanian Communists captured Monsignor Nikoll Tusha, he was offered to Communist comrades, who executed him by gunshot, in Montenegro, on September 14, 1946. VIVA CRISTO REY! RROFTE KRISHTI MBRET! 3/5/2018 0 Comments VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王!In the province of Chahar, there was one Communist official who wanted the Trappist abbey, Our Lady of Consolation, destroyed and its members “liquidated.”
A bitter fanatic, he searched for someone with a like mind, and eventually he found the perfect Party man for the job and appointed him to take care of the extermination. That man was an ambitious man, who hated everything having to do with God and loved everything having to do with the Communist Party. That man was an intelligent man, who had attended a university in Peking, where he passed his law exams. That man, like Tse-Tung Mao, was from a family of landowners considered oppressors, enemies of the "People" (the State), and, also like Mao, he renounced his family. That man was Tui-Shih Li. In August 1947, he targeted the abbey and its Community, forcing them on a march through the mountains when he heard that the Nationalist general, Tso-Yi Fu, planned to rescue the monks. However, the general aborted that plan and ordered his troops to about-face, when he learned that the monks had been forced to march up the mountains. Li had successfully avoided a showdown. On August 18, he decided to return everyone to the abbey. Another black night, and the monks marched down the mountain paths toward Yang Kia Ping. By the time the prisoners filed through Gate No. 1 and slogged toward their cells, two more neared death. By August 20, both were dead. Without ceremony, but inside the enclosure, they were buried. One was Brother Clemens Kao (b. 1899), physically handicapped, who had been born in Chahar province, in Yu Chou Hsien, where many Trappist vocations had blossomed over the years. VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王! An intellectual, scholar and Catholic priest, Father Nikollë Gazulli was running for his life, running from the Communists in Albania who pursued him.
Communists, with their theophobic Socialist ideology of death and destruction, always liquidate conservative intellectuals. And conservative clergy. They're considered political enemies. Why? Because they understand what Socialism is. And since they are led by the intellect, they cannot be controlled by the Socialists, who control the masses by emotions through propaganda repeated, and repeated. But eventually, the Communists captured Father Nikollë Gazulli and executed him, without a trial, by firing squad, March 23, 1946. VIVA CRISTO REY! RROFTE KRISHTI MBRET! 3/4/2018 0 Comments VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王!In the province of Chahar, there was one Communist official who wanted the Trappist abbey, Our Lady of Consolation, destroyed and its members “liquidated.”
A bitter fanatic, he searched for someone with a like mind, and eventually he found the perfect Party man for the job and appointed him to take care of the extermination. That man was an ambitious man, who hated everything having to do with God and loved everything having to do with the Communist Party. That man was an intelligent man, who had attended a university in Peking, where he passed his law exams. That man, like Tse-Tung Mao, was from a family of landowners considered oppressors, enemies of the "People" (the State), and, also like Mao, he renounced his family. That man was Tui-Shih Li. In August 1947, he targeted the abbey and its Community, forcing them on a march through the mountains when he heard that the Nationalist general, Tso-Yi Fu, planned to rescue monks. However, he aborted that plan and ordered his troops to about-face, when he learned that the monks had been forced to march up the mountains. Li had successfully avoided a showdown. On August 18, he decided to return everyone to the abbey. Another black night, and the monks marched down the mountain paths toward Yang Kia Ping. By the time the prisoners filed through Gate No. 1, slogged toward their cells, two more neared death. By August 20, both were dead. Without ceremony, but inside the enclosure, they were buried. One was Brother Philippus Liu (b. 1877), a horticulturist for most of his life, was from the district of Feng Tai Hsien, a little south of Peking, in Hopei. VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王!
Falsely accused of being a traitor and spy for Italy and Germany, Father Anton Harapi was sentenced to death, on February 14, 1946.
That night, taken from his prison cell to the firing squad, he was executed and buried in an unmarked grave in the outskirts of Tirana. VIVA CRISTO REY! RROFTE KRISHTI MBRET! First martyr cleric from Korça was Father Papa Pandi, killed during torture at the hands of the Communists, in October 1945.
VIVA CRISTO REY! RROFTE KRISHTI MBRET! (If anyone has a photo of Papa Pandi, please, let me know! Thanks!) 3/3/2018 0 Comments VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王!In October 1937, only a few months after the outbreak of the Second Chinese-Japanese War, the Chinese Communists reached Cho Lu County and the valley of Yang Kia Ping, in northern China.
The Trappist abbey, Our Lady of Consolation, found itself between the two forces: Japanese soldiers to the north and the east, and revolutionary Chinese Communist soldiers to the south and the west. With the end of World War II, on August 15, 1945, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Japanese forces retreated from their positions around the world, thus withdrawing from China. The end of the war also ended the so-called truce between the Nationalists and the Communists. The Nationalists, unable to re-occupy northern China, which had come under control of the Reds, could only stand at strategic points along borders, and an all-out civil war between the two resumed in a brutal fight. But the Nationalists weren’t the only targets during the civil war. The Communists also started targeting other enemies: counterrevolutionaries, religious believers and landlords. The Trappist monks were all three. The Communists made plans to destroy the abbey and its Community, so the persecution began, with revolutionary struggle, torture and death. The first to die was Brother Bruno Fu (b. 1868). After a forced march, the 79-year-old fell to the ground, never to rise again. Two days later, on August 15, 1947, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, he should have been celebrating the golden jubilee of his solemn and final vows. Instead, the kindhearted old man lay dead. The Communists ordered that the body of the proto-martyr of the Trappist monks of Our Lady of Consolation be dumped without ceremony in a shallow grave. VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王! With a crucifix in his right hand, Father Zef Leonard Tagaj faced his executioners and shouted, "Rise Albania! May God bless the people of Albania! Christ is the King of the Immortals! Also, you too may be blessed!"
As a Catholic priest, he was persecuted in atheist Albania, a regime led by the revolutionary Communist Party with its theophobic Socialist ideology of death and destruction, As his words ended, the firing squad shot the fatal bullets into the priest, on February 4, 1945. VIVA CRISTO REY! RROFTE KRISHTI MBRET! 3/2/2018 0 Comments VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國君王!Under extreme pressure from the Chinese Communists, Matthew Koo refused to join the Three-Self Reform Movement (the precursor to the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association) and renounce the Pope. He even joined the Zikawei seminary, in 1953.
That all ended on September 8, 1955, when revolutionary Communist authorities arrested Matthew, then-Bishop Pinmei Kung and hundreds of other Shanghai Catholics for counterrevolutionary activities. For the next 29 years, he suffered torture in hellish detention centers, prisons in Shanghai and survived the Great Chinese Famine in slave labor death camps, in Chinghai, while prisoner. And when his sentence was over, in 1965, because of hukou, he was not permitted to return to Shanghai, his home, but he was forced to remain in the death camp as a post-prisoner detained employee. Finally, he escaped, in 1984, and, in 1988, he was secretly ordained in the underground Catholic Church by underground Bishop Zhongliang "Joseph" Fan. VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國君王! Father Lekë Luli was vocally anti-Communist in the Communist-infiltrated Albania.
As an enemy of the revolutionary Communist Party with its theophobic Socialist ideology of death and destruction, he became a target. And on July 16, 1944, the Communist bullet met its Catholic target when he was killed by gunshot and then robbed, for no reason other than he was a Catholic priest. VIVA CRISTO REY! RROFTE KRISHTI MBRET!. 3/1/2018 0 Comments VIVA CRISTO REY! 萬歲耶穌基督國王!Naked, the emaciated corpse with its purplish black skin, offered no resemblance to the once robust, happy-go-lucky priest, Father Cheng-Ming “Beda” Chang (old form of Zhengming Zhang, 1905-51, Society of Jesus).
After Chinese Communist authorities tortured the 46-year-old priest for months, he died alone, on Sunday, November 11, 1951, in the bowels of Shanghai City Prison, commonly called Tilanchiao (old form of Tilanqiao). Locked up in a cell opposite, Father W. Aedan McGrath (an Irish missionary arrested for being a Catholic priest and his work with the Legion of Mary) heard the Jesuit vomiting every day for two months. Then, all of a sudden, the retching stopped. Summoned to identify the body, Father Shih-Fang “Francis Xavier” Tsai (old form of Shifang Cai, 1907-97, Society of Jesus), stared at the unrecognizable corpse that lay on the musty floor, where he had collapsed and succumbed to the final bout in his good fight. Nothing appeared familiar that assured Father Tsai of the dead man’s identity, but when he looked closer at the frozen face and into his gaping mouth, there they were, the two distinct false teeth that set Father Chang apart from all others. One of the prison guards complained, “He was fearfully stubborn and resisted until death overtook him.” Joyful news. He had not surrendered; he had remained faithful to the Pope, the papal primacy, the divine institution, the Petrine powers – passed from pope to pope – that was, is and always will be the mystical head of Christendom, preserving the unity of the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. From the prison in Shanghai’s northern Hongkew District, Father Chang’s bearers carried him across town to Zikawei’s Chapel of the Virgin Mother. There, the faithful prayed over the body lying in repose and touched their rosary beads and other religious objects to the cold flesh of the priest, whom they honored as a martyr, for which beatification is simple. With the prerequisite of a miracle waived for a martyr, the only requirement to beatify would be proof that he died for the faith. And certainly, they believed, he had. An educated man, he received a doctorate in literature from the University of Paris, the Sorbonne, in 1938. When he returned home, he became the much-admired principal of a preparatory secondary school, in Zikawei, Saint Ignatius College, which he spiritually protected and physically preserved for the future salvation of souls. In September 1950, when the statues of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary in the school’s chapel were mutilated during an early-morning, anti-Catholic attack, Father Chang made certain that the figures were quickly repaired and ceremoniously returned to their special niches in the sanctuary, above the altar. In March 1951, Communist authorities arranged a meeting for the principals of all Shanghai religious schools financially supported by foreigners. The government planned to force the religious institutions to implement and promote the Three-Self Reform Movement. Ordered to attend because of his administrative position, he sat and listened quietly until the conclusion of the meeting, when attendees were asked for any objections. Father Chang stood. “We cannot break away from our Pope in Rome,” he said. With that, he sealed his fate. Not long after, he was forced from his position at the school, and then on the afternoon of August 9, 1951, authorities muscled their way into the rectory, where they found him in the midst of a quiet game of mah-jongg with three theology professors from Zikawei seminary. Because he had opposed the Three-Self Reform Movement, the Expel Riberi Campaign and all Communist attempts to eradicate the Vatican-led Catholic Church, he was accused of having conducted anti-Communist propaganda in school and of being a running dog for imperialists. He was arrested. The day after his death, from one end of Shanghai to the other, thousands of faithful flocked to churches to attend Masses, the unbloody sacrifices of Calvary. As a sign of mourning, women and girls pinned white flowers in their hair. Men and boys tied strips of black material around their upper arms. Priests donned blood-red vestments symbolizing that Father Chang had, indeed, died the death of a martyr, that he had, indeed, been killed for the faith. Although a solemn funeral cortege had been forbidden by authorities, the priest’s skeleton-like corpse, laid in a plain, pine coffin, was carried to his grave in the dead of night, on November 13, accompanied only by his immediate family and two priests, to Hsi Yi Catholic Cemetery, Although armed guards patrolled the cemetery, a steady stream of mourners paid their respects at the gravesite where a blank headstone had been placed, with an order that it be engraved: CRIMINAL REACTIONARY CHANG. One of the visiting faithful wrote in chalk upon the unmarked stone: VIVA CHRISTO REI. 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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