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!