January 21st, 2020

“With God in China: Father Eleutherius and Brother Peter,” Winner of the 2009 Los Angeles Press Club Award, for News Feature.
Judges’ comment: “Her gripping account of life for two Catholic priests in China is superb. She calmly explains the constant political upheaval in China, the awful effects of those changes on Winance and Zhou – and their unflinching faith – and, finally, how they emerged later with new lives. It’s a history lesson, a faith lesson and a stark recitation of a dark time in history.”

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Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
 
– Sir Winston Churchill –

Brother Peter bares his scars, Valyermo, circa 2009.

With God in China
Father Eleutherius and Brother Peter

 
 
Joseph Marie Louis Stanislas Winance was 4 years old when he stood on a train platform in Mons, Belgium, in 1914.

Surrounded by his family, he squeezed his way past long skirts and stepped over thick leather shoes to say goodbye to his Aunt Marthe Reumont (1893-1975), leaving her home for the Republic of China that June morning to become a novitiate with the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary.

“Aunt Marthe, one day I will go to China and be your cook,” he said, looking up into her smiling face.

Little did that small boy realize how part of his childhood pledge would come true. For 20 years later, as a cleric in Saint Andrew’s Abbey, in Bruges, Belgium, he was walking along the cloister, praying his breviary when he received an order to report to Father Abbot Théodore (Jean-Baptiste Marie Joseph Jules Corneille Nève, 1879-1963, Order of Saint Benedict).

“My dear son,” Father Abbot Théodore said to the 24-year-old draped in the long black Benedictine habit, enveloped in the long black shadows of the late afternoon, “I plan to send you to China.”

“Yes,” was all that the young monk said.

But he wasn’t prepared for what he had heard. He didn’t sleep all that night. His thoughts dwelled upon the trouble the Communists had caused in Szechuan (old form of Sichuan), the province where he would be sent. His Aunt Marthe, who had become Mother Marie Jeanne Françoise de Chantal, mourned the loss of several buildings her order had built, in the city of Suining, that Communist soldiers had burned and destroyed.

Nonetheless, after a restless night, the morning brought a tranquility that sedated his soul. The Benedictine, who as a novitiate had accepted the name Eleutherius, welcomed his fate as the will of God, wrote to his parents Emile Winance (1878-1953) and Gabrielle Winance (née Reumont, 1890-1976) and broke the news to them about his future mission.

The eldest of their four sons, he had been born in 1909 and was soon followed by Gerard, a beautiful boy who died in infancy. Next arrived André (1912-81), who would become a successful architect and whose marriage would be blessed with six children. The youngest, Pierre (1914-82), would also join the Benedictines, as Father Simon Pierre, and work as a missionary until his death in Likasi, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo when it was known as Zaire.
 
Two years after receiving his assignment, the bells of Saint Andrew’s rang out on the morning of September 4, 1936, to celebrate the departure of three newly ordained priests: Father Eleutherius (1909-2009, Order of Saint Benedict), Father Vincent Martin (1912-99, Order of Saint Benedict) and Father Wilfrid Weitz (1912-91, Order of Saint Benedict). All in their 20s, they had dedicated their lives to God.

Before leaving the cloister, Father Eleutherius received a bon voyage gift from Father Abbot Théodore, “The Rule of Saint Benedict,” with the following inscription: “I wish never to see you again.”

Father Eleutherius smiled. He completely understood the message. Many monks had left the abbey for their missions, but some had failed and returned. He slipped the book into his leather suitcase – a gift from his maternal Uncle Henri Reumont (1892-1965, Order of Friars Minor Capuchin), a missionary with the religious name Father Damian.

The three priests traveled to China via Moscow, the Communist capital of the revolutionary Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. There, they boarded the Trans-Siberian Railway’s Trans-Manchurian line and readied for the 5,000-mile trip to Peking (old form of Beijing), China’s northern capital, where Father Eleutherius paid a visit to a woman he hadn’t seen in many years.

“Here is my cook in China,” Aunt Marthe joked as she introduced her lanky nephew to her Sisters in the convent. She had not forgotten. It was a marvelous reunion.

From Peking, it was another train to Hankow (old form of Hankou), a big city on the third-longest river in the world: the Yangtze, known as the Chang Jiang, the Long River. Then west, their steamboat coughed its way along the water – which flowed red, a prophetic color of muddied blood – and chugged between moss-covered, sky-high gorges.

One of the wonders of the world, Father Eleutherius thought, staring at the mountains that broke through the water and stretched straight up, endlessly.

Passing Chinese junks with their dragon-wing sails flapping, the boat pulled up for a breather in Chungching (old form of Chongqing), where the Yangtze married the Chialing River (old form of Jialing River). Then one more ship, one more day, northward, to Hochuan (old form of Hechuan), where Father Eleutherius and his two confreres hired porters, lovers of the opium pipe who bore their burdens – priests and possessions – upon chairs dangling from poles that rode upon their callused shoulders.

Yes, the priests had traveled from West to East, from Occident to Orient, but in their journey they had been, seemingly, transported – in all they saw, in all they experienced – from the 20th century back to the 14th.

Late in the afternoon of November 19, 1936, after a week of traveling on foot and upon chair through Suining, Penhsi (old form of Pengxi) and Nanchung (old form of Nanchong), a final deep valley led up a hill. At the top, the men paused. Father Eleutherius walked to the edge and looked down. Just below, for the first time, he saw his future home: Saints Peter and Andrew’s Priory of Nanchung.

When they arrived at the hilltop, the day was gray. So, too, was Father Eleutherius’ mood.

I shall never be happy here, he thought, with a sinking heart.

The time, 5:15, with the sun still up but sinking fast. Father Eleutherius looked at the main building, designed with a classical Chinese style, its roof corners decorated with upturned eaves, like erect dragon tails. A courtyard peeked out from the center. To the left, a small red-sand mountain covered with rows of mandarin orange trees leaning sunward, lurching from their three hillside terraces.

For the final 10 minutes of a 10-week-long journey, Father Eleutherius jogged downhill.

Founded in 1929, the monastery rose in response to a plea for more priests in China. Father Abbot Théodore received the request from six newly consecrated Chinese bishops during their visit to Saint Andrew’s, during Christmas 1926, following their much-celebrated Episcopal elevations, on October 28, 1926:

Bishop Huai-Yi “Philip” Chao (old form of Huaiyi Zhao, 1880-1927), vicar apostolic of Hsüanhua (old form of Xuanhua);

Bishop Kai-Min “Simon” Chu (old form of Kaimin Zhu, 1868-1960, Society of Jesus), bishop of Haimen;

Bishop Jo-Shan “Joseph” Hu (old form of Ruoshan Hu, 1881-1962, Congregation of the Mission), bishop of Linhai;

Bishop Te-Chen “Melchior” Souen, (old form of Dezhen Sun, 1869-1951, Congregation of the Mission), vicar apostolic emeritus of Ankuo (old form of Anguo);

Bishop Kuo-Ti “Aloysius” Tchen (old form of Guodi Chen, 1875-1930, Order of Friars Minor), vicar apostolic of Fenyang; and

Bishop He-Te “Odoric Simon” Tcheng (old form of Hede Cheng, 1873-1928, Order of Friars Minor), bishop of Puchi (old form of Puqi).
 
The Benedictine monks called their monastery Shi-Shan (old form of Xishan), Chinese for Mountain of the West, where it nestled in the foothills.

Although fluent in French, Latin, Greek and English, Father Eleutherius knew not a word, not a character of Chinese, so he had to learn the language. After a month-long rest, just before winter’s drizzle soaked monks and monastery, he ventured out – on foot – for Suining, about 70 miles away.

For the next nine months, the language student made his home with the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris in their two-story priory and offered Mass in its adjoining chapel – both built in a European style that stood like palaces surrounded by a city of hovels. To pick up the everyday local dialect of Mandarin, the mother tongue of mainland China, his days were filled with hours of repetition. But the real challenge arrived after lunch, when local children gathered around the priests resting outdoors in the chapel’s garden.

Among them was a slim, shy boy, Pang-Chiu “Simon” Chou (old form of Bangjiu Zhou, born 1926).

Chou’s large family, devout Catholics for who-knows-how-many generations, lived in a one-story, four-room wooden structure without amenities. Illumination: only wicks soaked with pork oil gave light. Water: carried from a public well on the street corner. Flooring: only the bare earth beneath their feet. Ventilation: a simple hole in the roof above the coal cooker.

Property of the church, it was located on the other side of a wall behind the chapel. So close, that Pang-Chiu often attended daily Mass with his parents and brothers. But on holy days of obligation, the Chou family walked several miles to the big parish Catholic Church of God, located within the city walls.

Pang-Chiu’s vocation began suddenly one Sunday, in August 1934, when Father Gabriel Roux (1900-36, Order of Saint Benedict), then-prior of Shi-Shan, visited Suining, with Father Abbot Théodore, from the motherhouse in Bruges, who was accompanied by two new priest-monks: Father Raphael Vinciarelli (1897-1972, Order of Saint Benedict) and Father Thaddeus (An-Jan Yang, old form of Anran Yang, 1905-82, Order of Saint Benedict).

After Mass, Pang-Chiu’s father, Tzu-Nan “Paul” Chou (old form of Zinan Zhou, 1885-1958), had an idea.

Although he persevered at selling eyeglasses from his sidewalk table, with several mouths to feed, the few yuan he earned never seemed enough for the survival of his family: wife Wang-Shih “Mary” (old form of Wangshi, 1890-1950), eldest son Pang-You (old form of Bangyu, 1916-36), fourth son Pen-Ku “John Baptist” (old form of Bengu, 1922-2005), fifth son Chih-Min “Philip” (old form of Zhimin, 1924-97), and sixth son Pang-Chiu.

Already, second and third sons had not survived infancy.

With forethought, he planned a future for his Number 6 Son. Following thanksgiving prayers, he pulled 8-year-old Pang-Chiu from the pew, and the two walked to the priory, where Father Abbot Théodore, Father Gabriel and Chinese pastor Father De (old form of Te) sat beside the stove in the lounge, waiting for breakfast.

Pang-Chiu and his father entered, kneeled before Father Abbot Théodore and kissed his ring.

“Please, receive my son in the monastery as an oblate to study to be a monk,” Pang-Chiu’s father requested, as the Chinese pastor translated for the Belgians into Latin in sotto voce.

The two visiting priests said nothing, but smiled. Four years later, in August 1938, when the monastery began accepting oblates, Pang-Chiu, at the age of 12, was one of the first.

He wanted a better life, that was clear, but to be a monk, that was not clear.

Even though life inside the monastery was – on most days – peaceful, life in China was anything but, for the country had been in turmoil for years.

After the Republican Revolution of 1911, which ended the centuries-long dynastic rule, the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, old form of Guomindang) was formed by a number of Republican cliques that had ousted the traditional rulers.

But in 1927, the Nationalists – after Kai-Shek Chiang (old form of Jieshi Jiang, 1887-1975) assumed leadership – ousted its Communist contingent, because of its incitement and sadistic fondness of mob violence, especially at the encouragement of its ringleader, Tse-Tung Mao (old form of Zedong Mao, 1893-1976).

Mao, a notorious sore loser, never forgot or forgave a slight. That snub in 1927 ignited the highly volatile on-again-off-again Chinese Civil War between the Nationalist and Communist factions that ravaged China for more than two decades.

However, the Communists weren’t the only problem. Also a factor: the Empire of Japan, which saw the fractures in China’s infrastructure as an opportunity to make land grabs. In an attempt to establish their own political and economic domination, in 1931, the Japanese invaded Manchuria, a region in northeast China, where they wanted to get their hands on the land’s natural resources of coal, iron, gold and giant forests.

Subsequently, on July 7, 1937, commemorated as 7-7-7, the Second Chinese-Japanese War began when the Imperial Japanese Army marched victoriously into Peking, then into Shanghai and on and on throughout China.

As part of its plan of aggression, the Imperial Japanese Air Combat Groups dispatched war planes that dropped bombs upon populated areas, killing countless Chinese.

When Japanese military aircraft crossed the Szechuan border, a high-pitched steam whistle pierced the air all the way to Nanchung and alerted everyone within earshot, including those in the monastery. Although several miles away, it was impossible to miss.

Father Eleutherius rounded up the oblates, including Pang-Chiu, and all sought safety outdoors, away from the buildings, seeking refuge under the overhang of a boulder or in a hole in the ground. More than once, as planes dropped their destruction onto Nanchung, Father Eleutherius listened to the descending whistles of the bombs before they exploded upon the earth.

During the height of the Japanese invasion, the death match between the Nationalists and the Communists experienced a lengthy timeout when Communists kidnapped Generalissimo Chiang and compelled him to sign a truce, creating on paper a superficial United Front in the War of Resistance Against Japan to fight the invaders.

That was the situation in China. It was a mess.

And in Europe, World War II raged. The result: no communication, no money between Shi-Shan and Saint Andrew’s Abbey, in Belgium. Cut off financially from its motherhouse, the fledgling religious community had to shutter Shi-Shan, in 1942, and seek refuge in Szechuan’s capital city, Chengtu (old form of Chengdu), where Bishop Jacques Victor Marius Rouchouse (1870-1948, Society of Foreign Missions of Paris) offered the Benedictines financial help and a home – their own monastery in the city.

Slowly, monks and oblates migrated from mountain to metropolis. Pang-Chiu moved to the new priory, in July 1944; however, Father Eleutherius remained in Shi-Shan, until July 1945, when he received a short letter from the new prior, Father Raphael Vinciarelli.

“Come to Chengtu,” Father Raphael wrote.

With his breviary, diary, bits of paper with scribbles in Latin and in Greek and a few other books packed away in the same leather suitcase his Uncle Henri had presented to him for his journey to Shi-Shan, in 1936, Father Eleutherius reluctantly shut the door to his cell a final time. He trudged up the hill that he had jogged down 10 years earlier, turned and looked at the monastery one last time.

I was wrong. I was very, very happy here, he lamented.
 
Never again did he see Shi-Shan.

It was a familiar journey to Chengtu. Father Eleutherius hiked one day to Nanchung, where he hitched a ride on a truck, which nearly killed him when it overturned. But he made it, exhausted, and finally walked through the front gate of his new home, 172 Yang Shi Kai.

World War II ended one month later, on August 15, 1945, Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And with the defeat of the Japanese, the Chinese celebrated their own Victory Over Japan (V-J) Day.

But it wasn’t fun and firecrackers for long.

The end of the Japanese occupation also brought the end of the so-called truce between Mao’s Communists and Chiang’s Nationalists. An all-out civil war between the two ensued in an elimination battle.

With the theophobic Communists marauding around the northern border of Szechuan, the future looked grim for Catholics. Then when Mao – the materialist messiah of the new China – stood at the Gate of Heavenly Peace overlooking Tien-An-Men (old form of Tiananmen) Square, on October 1, 1949, and announced the birth of the Marxist monster, the People’s Republic of China – with himself the head of the beast – that was truly the beginning of the end.

But for Pang-Chiu, a theophilic Catholic, what happened in the material world mattered not to his spiritual world. On October 15, 1949, he stepped into the sanctuary of the monastery’s chapel, kneeled before the altar, was admitted into the novitiate and dedicated his life to that Benedictine battalion in the Church Militant. In addition to a new monk’s habit, he received a new name: Peter, and a new title: Brother.

The final stages, the death throes, of the civil war continued. Throughout October 1949. Then November.

In December, a constant firing of weapons outside the walls of Chengtu could be heard inside the city. The Nationalists weakened. They could no longer hold the mission steady.

Following a two-week battle between the enemies, the Nationalists finally retreated.

They gave up the fight, gave up the city, gave up the war and gave up the country – to Communism – as Mao chased Chiang from the mainland to Formosa (old Portuguese name of Taiwan).

Few realized what had happened at 3 o’clock that Christmas, in the early morning.

Father Eleutherius had no idea, as he mounted his bicycle around 9 a.m. and steered for a boulevard outside the city, which had turned oddly quiet. An affable sort, he wanted to spread holiday cheer and wish Merry Christmas to some Protestant intellectuals he had befriended at Provincial Academy of Fine Arts, where they all taught.

Wheeling along, he noticed freshly raised red flags flying everywhere, snapping in the winter wind. Newly pasted on city walls, many new posters, splashed with huge, bold Chinese characters: freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of religion.

His friends, the professors, had already heard about the change in government and were all atwitter. Unhappy under the Nationalists, because of economic crises that had dominated the news during their rule, the Marxist intellectuals looked forward to a new life under the Communists, who had promised everything to everyone: Everyone would be rich. Everyone would have a piano. Everyone would be happy in the new utopia.

However, in reality, by the end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-76), only Communist officials would be rich, most pianos would be destroyed and an estimated 77 million Chinese would be dead as a result of the hell caused by the totalitarian regime’s bloody campaigns.

Nothing extraordinary happened at the monastery, until April 25, 1950. That night, at 9 o’clock, the monks heard the furious barking of their many dogs kept loose on the property to keep Communists out.

“Tie the dogs up!” shouted a stranger in the dark.

Slowly, deliberately, the monks calmed the dogs.

“We have an order to make a search of the buildings. Go to your rooms,” demanded a uniformed police officer.

Behind a closed door, Father Eleutherius listened to the goings-on outside his room.

When he heard the clicking of gun metal in the room below, in the cell of Father Werner (Pierre Papeians de Morchoven, 1914-2008, Order of Saint Benedict), he opened his door to go downstairs and investigate.

“Stay in your room!” said an officer, with more 50 behind him.

The situation in China had definitely taken a turn.

Father Eleutherius returned to his room and quietly looked through his bureau. He found a photograph of Father Werner, who had been born into Belgian nobility, dressed in his uniform as a chaplain to the United States Air Force, which could cause definite trouble.

He immediately swallowed the photo. For six hours, he remained in his room. The officers didn’t leave until 3 a.m., after a thorough search for radios, transmitters, anything that could be used to make contact outside China. They also searched – unsuccessfully – for anything that could link the monks to the Legion of Mary, a benign, religious organization deemed a great enemy of the People.

In 1949, the Communists had established the Three-Self Reform Movement, so named for its aim to be self-governing, self-propagating and self-supporting. The Movement (later replaced by the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, on July 15, 1957) was the Communist attempt to break completely with the Vatican and the Pope and to establish a schismatic Chinese catholic church.

Although the regime pushed its atheist agenda, they learned that Catholics steered clear of the Movement, primarily because the Legion of Mary, an apostolic association, educated Catholics about the true intentions of the Communist-led Three-Self Reform Movement.

Freedom, Mao’s lie of the past, replaced by a new word: Purge.

Fear began to fill everyone.

Daily papers printed by the regime ran editorials of raging propaganda to manipulate public opinion for the Party’s purpose. Anyone who did not share the Communist ideology was labeled an enemy of the People (Communists), and when the People demanded justice, political enemies were hauled before judges (interrogators) and dealt with according to social justice (mob vengeance).

Freight trucks rolled by, packed with the condemned, forced to wear large signs scrawled with Chinese characters: enemy of the people. Day and night, they headed for Chengtu’s North Gate.

Brother Peter seldom ventured outdoors, preferring to remain in the monastery to study.

On the other hand, to record for history what he witnessed, Father Eleutherius continued to ride his bicycle around the city, where he noticed, at times, a certain man.

“A man of around 30 years old, clothed with the blue uniform of the ‘organized and conscious’ workers was inspecting the lorries with their load of human victims at the gate, among a roaring crowd,” Father Eleutherius wrote in his diary.

“When the lorries were slowly passing the gate, the man ‘sketched’ in the air a small gesture while he looked at the lorries. That man was a priest, giving the last absolution to Catholics crouched in the lorries, all about to die. He was absolving some of his faithful parishioners lost in the crowd of ‘damned’ enemies of the People.”

Past the North Gate, a final ride across a bridge of stone, the victims were herded out of trucks and executed, usually shot in the back of the head. Their limp bodies, rolled into mass graves.

On November 4, 1951, Brother Peter was ordered to attend a public meeting, during which he knew that the Roman Catholic Church would be criticized, verbally attacked.

Before entering the monastery’s grand entrance hall, where the Communists ordered the meeting to be held, he prepared a speech. In it, he described the Pope of Rome as the only visible head of the Roman Catholic Church, he denounced the Three-Self Reform Movement as a Communist tool, and he defended the Legion of Mary as a religious organization.

As he wrote down his sentiments, he realized what effect his counterrevolutionary words would have on his future, which he later summed up publicly in his conclusion:

“My head is completely calm and clear. My soul is impregnated with the eternal truth of Jesus and with His inexhaustible goodness. In the final analysis, I know who Jesus Christ is. I understand where man comes from and where he goes after death. This gives me a more profound knowledge of the meaning of human life,” he said, in a clear and strong voice.

He did not falter.

“Therefore, do not worry about me. Do not try to offer a hand of sympathy to save me from what are my chains of truth. I only ask you to do with me whatever you like, according to the common judgment of the masses. I deliver my body to you, but I keep my soul for the good God, for Him, who has created me, nourished me, redeemed me and loved me.”

Brother Peter readily accepted his fate, and the chains.

So, too, Father Eleutherius, who on the morning of February 5, 1952, received an order to report to the police station, where he underwent interrogation and insults. In a few hours, he found himself before the Supreme Court of the Military Government of Western Szechuan, which declared him guilty of his crimes: that he had spread false rumors and that he had opposed the Three-Self Reform Movement, among other offenses. Sentence: forever banished.

That evening around 6 p.m., Father Eleutherius and 11 other foreigners – five priests and six nuns, mostly elderly – were marched forcibly through the streets of Chengtu and out the South Gate to walk along the old stone road. His Aunt Marthe had left China years earlier. For more than two weeks, they were escorted by six armed guards, as they traveled by foot, bus, train and boat. The dirt-encrusted group reached China’s southern border, on February 21, 1952, almost too weak, too sick to cross Lo Wu Bridge into Hong Kong, into freedom.

Once safely on the other side, Father Eleutherius wrote to his mother, “I come from hell.”

Free, he soon left for home, Belgium.

But in hell, Brother Peter remained.

As a native of China, the monk was not permitted to leave. Outside China, no one heard a single word about him after the Bamboo Curtain descended upon the land and its people. Nothing, but complete silence.

No one knew that, on April 26, 1952, the Communists forced him out of the monastery, after which he barely scraped by for a few years.

No one knew what happened to him, on November 7, 1955, when he was wakened, at 3 a.m., by the blare of a car horn, followed by a pounding on the front door. He jumped out of bed, pulled on some clothing and clambered to answer the door on the first floor, when two police officers, each holding a revolver, ran up the stairs.

“Raise your hands!” they shouted.

For Brother Peter, that night he was arrested was the beginning of 26 years of torture.

Accused of crimes against the People’s Government, because he had refused to join the Communist national catholic church, he was considered a counterrevolutionary, a political enemy who opposed the Communist Revolution.

Imprisoned, he endured intense interrogations for the first three years. At one point, his hands were cuffed behind his back for 29 days in an attempt to get him to reform and to renounce his fidelity to Rome, to the Pope.

Brother Peter never gave in.

In August 1958, guards transported him to a courtroom and forced him to stand, as his case was presented to three judges, who attempted to coerce him to admit his counterrevolutionary crimes.

All alone, without a defense attorney, without family, without friends, his trial lasted no more than 10 minutes. One month later, again he was escorted by guards to a courtroom, where in fewer than five minutes he received his sentence: 20 years.

After the pronouncement, he attempted to pull from his pocket a pre-written short declaration, but one of the judges jumped from his seat and ran toward Brother Peter.

“You needn’t read it! Just submit to us!” he screamed, and snatched from Brother Peter’s hand the following statement:

“It was because of my defending the Catholic faith that I was imprisoned. I strongly protest any kind of judgment, which flagrantly flies in the face of all facts, made by this court. I will never accept any false charges held against me. I decided, however, not to lodge a basically ineffectual appeal to the higher court that can implement nothing else than the same wrong policy of the same Communist Party. To follow the holy example of our Savior Jesus, I am ready to serve any sentence, even to sacrifice my life for the Truth!”

For the next couple years, the persecuted monk was transferred from one prison to another, until June 15, 1960, when he was bused to Number 1 Prison of Szechuan Province.

Upon arrival, he defiantly wrote on his registration form: “I was arrested without cause and imprisoned for the Church.”

During the daily brainwashing study sessions, he refused to participate, which rankled prison rank and file, who described him as having a bad attitude.

On August 10, 1960, he was summoned to the office of the section chief in charge of discipline and education.

“Do you admit that you have committed a crime?” the section chief asked.

“I have not committed any crime. I have only defended the faith of the Catholic Church,” Brother Peter answered.

Twice more the section chief asked the same question.

Twice more Brother Peter answered the same.

The section chief pulled from his pants pocket a pair of bronze handcuffs and motioned for two of his assistants to grab Brother Peter’s arms and to pull them behind his back.

The section chief clicked the cuffs into place, about 5 inches above the wrists, and continued to tighten the cuffs, a click at a time.

For five days, Brother Peter endured not only the pain from the cuffs, but he had to endure harsh verbal attacks and physical abuse from other inmates, who were forced to inflict punishment on him from dawn till dark, or they could face the same. During an intense criticism session, on August 15, 1960, someone grabbed the handcuff on his right forearm. Click. The cuff was forcefully ratcheted to the fifth and last tooth.

Despite the pain – physical, mental, emotional – Brother Peter resisted. Back in his cell, he prayed silently, in his heart, to Christ, to the Blessed Mother, to the Holy Ghost. He found tranquility.

In the unbearable summer heat, the cuff dug into the meat, the muscle of his arm. The rancid smell of the bloody mess stewing in his crematorium-like cell lured flies that laid eggs. When hatched, the maggots dined on his dying flesh. From the cuff down, his right arm grew completely numb, and then withered. His fingers crippled, seized into a permanent claw-like grip.

After four weeks, guards removed the cuffs, but clamped shackles onto his ankles. For three years he dragged his chains, until May 1963, when two prison guards summoned the monk, who stood no taller than 5 feet, 1 inch and weighed no more than 90 pounds.

“Why do you not follow the example of the priest Wen-Jing Li? You must change your obstinate stand and take the path of siding with the Communist Party and the Chinese People. If you do this, you will gain a bright future,” they told him.

But Brother Peter completely rejected their suggestion; as a result, he was moved to solitary confinement.

Before slamming the door shut, they chided, “Here, you are to reflect carefully and do serious self-examination in this new situation.”

Enclosed in darkness for nearly two years, Brother Peter found an inner light, as he reflected, prayed, meditated and composed lyrical lines of poetry.

March 13, 1965, the door opened. Light bathed his filthy body.

“Thought reform is a long process, and you need a better environment to do self-remolding,” a guard said, removing Brother Peter’s iron shackles.

For the first time in five years, his ankles were free from the weight of the iron chains. It felt odd. He could barely walk. But there was never any freedom from torture in a Communist prison, especially for Brother Peter, a political prisoner.

For reciting aloud one of his poems that showed his unfaltering faith to God, an additional five years was tacked on to his sentence, in September 1966;

On Ash Wednesday, February 24, 1971, when he refused to read “Quotations from Chairman Tse-Tung Mao,” he was, again, handcuffed, shackled and placed in solitary confinement, where he remained for eight months;

When, on September 9, 1976, he refused to read an obituary glorifying the deceased Mao, he spent another five months in solitary;

And another five years was added to his sentence when, on Labor Day, May 1, 1977, he refused to purchase, with the few cents he earned for his prison labor, the fifth volume of “Selected Works of Tse-Tung Mao.”

But with the death of Mao, in 1976, one of the Chairman’s old political enemies, Hsiao-Ping Teng (old form of Xiaoping Deng, 1904-97), soared to power.

Best known as the Leader of China (1978-79), Teng opened China to the world, after December 1978, when he announced his State capitalist reforms and Open Door Market Economy Reform Policy, which loosened the binds that had strangled China under Mao.

Some Chinese unjustly imprisoned were released, including Brother Peter.

On July 22, 1981, the Benedictine monk received word that his sentence would be reduced and that he would immediately be set free. At the age of 54, he packed up his few belongings. Over the years, he had been able to purchase, from the prison store, small calendars on which he marked days of particular note regarding his imprisonment and treatment. Those he concealed between pages of the dictionaries that he packed among his bits of clothing.

On July 25, 1981, without hatred or bitterness, he bid farewell and walked through the two iron gates to freedom. Prison officials assigned a reliable inmate to accompany him the few miles to the Chialing River; once across, he spent his first night in nearly 26 years as a free man.

But almost 55 years old, he had no future. What was he to do.

Not knowing if it were possible to rejoin his monastic community, or if it even existed, he attempted contact.

On July 28, he sent off three letters to Saint Andrew’s Abbey, in Bruges, and a fourth to Yu-Hsiu “Pansy” Lang (old form of Yuxiu Lang), an old friend of the monastery. On December 22, he learned that the monastery had survived and that, in 1956, it had reestablished itself in the United States of America, in Valyermo, California.

After all those years, after almost 30 years, it was possible. Yes, he would rejoin his community.

Brother Peter’s old teacher Father Eleutherius was in Tournai, Belgium, visiting his brother André, when he received a letter from Father Gaetan Loriers (1915-96, Order of Saint Benedict), one of the monk-priests in Valyermo.

Opening the envelope and pulling out the letter, Father Eleutherius read, “Brother Peter is alive.”

He’s alive! Father Eleutherius thought, stunned with joy. Brother Peter’s alive!
 

                                                                                      †††
 

On November 27, 1984, Brother Peter was reunited with his religious community. At the age of 58, he finally professed his solemn religious vows, on June 29, 1985.

 

Father Eleutherius and Brother Peter, Valyermo, 2009.

"With God in China: Father Eleutherius and Brother Peter" has been published in "Martyrs in Red China."