MARTYRS IN RED CHINA
STORY 1
Father Timothy Peter Leonard
Pioneer of the Church in China
From love, Timothy Peter Leonard was created, and from hate, he was destroyed.
Born on the Feast of the Holy Apostles, June 29, 1893, the County Limerick native seemed destined to win a martyr’s crown like Saint Peter, who was crucified upside down in Nero’s amphitheater, and Saint Paul, who was beheaded with a sword in Aquae Salviae.
But rather than in Rome, the Eternal City, he would win his in a desolate mountain village, deep inside pagan China.
Second child to humble farmers, in an ever-expanding family, the Leonards laughed, ate, slept and prayed in their quaint home: the stout, single-story Ballycraheen House topped with a scruffy traditional thatched roof – sheaves of wheat straw attached to beams by a highly skilled thatcher.
Head of household, William (1843-1930) worked before the sun rose until after the sun set on his dairy farm, as he tended to his small herd of Herefords, a few dozen square-back cows with reddish-brown coats and white faces with long eyelashes. A few dry cows and bulls filled out the herd to graze the 70-acre estate, before sold off for butchering. In a pen off to the side, a few feeder hogs slept and sloshed about in a comfy sty, until it was their time.
Heart of the family, Mary Anne (1862-1945) tended to hearth and home and to her growing brood. In addition to Timothy, there were first-born William (1891-1961), Jane (1895-1984), Richard (1898-1972), Joseph (1900-73) and Mary (nicknamed Molly, 1902-73).
In the fields behind and beyond the whitewashed stone wall that matched the whitewashed stone house, the family tended to the homestead’s garden, where they tilled, seeded, weeded and prayed for abundant autumnal harvests that produced bushels of potatoes, cabbages, turnips and parsnips. The orchard grew wizened fruit trees with juicy red apples and succulent pears plucked and stored beside root vegetables in the food press, a large cupboard for storage.
On Sundays, feast days and Sacramental occasions, such as weddings and baptisms, the Leonards clambered aboard their pony and trap, without a canopy to protect them against drizzles and downpours. Up Peafield Road a ways, the pony veered left onto Monaleen Road and trotted toward Mary Magdalene Catholic Church. Perched atop a hill, the family’s spiritual home was a limestone Gothic revival beauty, with its pitched slate roof, soaring bell tower and dedication inscription over the main door: d.o.m. sub invocatione b mariae magdalenae ad 1873. Translation: God most excellent and great, under the invocation of Blessed Mary Magdalene, Anno Domini 1873.
Not the only Leonard family around, the clan extended beyond their own and included another, whose members also traveled by pony and trap to Mary Magdalene Church from their home, the Peafield House, the road’s namesake, about a third of a mile southwest from the Ballycraheen House, just a whistle away on a windy day...
STORY 2
Father Cornelius Tierney
A Real Missionary of Mercy
Like a gigantic three-tier birthday cake with wisps of smoke rising from extinguished candles, the Woong Woo steamboat – and its billowing smokestacks – floated 525 slow miles along the Chang Jiang, the Long River known around the world as the Yangtze River.
Nearing its destination, crewmembers steered the vessel landward and pulled alongshore, on August 21, 1920, with precious cargo aboard: Irish missionaries, 11 men who made up a squad in the Church Militant’s army of the Missionary Society of Saint Columban.
Five months earlier, in March, the long voyage began with final goodbyes in Dalgan Park, the order’s headquarters in Shrule, County Mayo. Chugging across the Atlantic Ocean to an ante-aeronautical United States of America, they traversed by land the wind-whipped prairies, the snow-capped mountains and the blossom-filled deserts to the West Coast, where they boarded a trans-Pacific Ocean liner to the pre-Communist Republic of China.
From the unsteady gangplank¸ the priests stepped onto foreign soil in Wuhan’s Hanyang District, in Hupei (old form of Hubei) province and entered an ancient world in the East, centuries behind the industrialized West, but where the Catholic priestly garb of the cassock blended seamlessly with the Chinese gown and its Mandarin collar.
On the way to their new residence, the Irishmen passed along streets so narrow they could stretch out their arms and touch with their fingertips the houses on both sides at the same time, as they splashed through puddles of a glistening-green water emitting a pungent smell, like an old sewer simmering in the sun on a scorching summer’s day.
Outside the noisy town, the men reached their mission, where several rented houses stood near one another, each with at least a dozen rooms, light and airy, all within a stone’s throw from a lake choked with lotus plants.
Father Cornelius Tierney (1871-1931, Missionary Society of Saint Columban), nearly 49 years old, was the eldest. More weathered than his freshly ordained confreres, he had received the Sacrament of Holy Orders, in 1899, for the Clogher diocese, and, subsequently, had taught Irish and the Classics.
So it was a bit surprising when he had felt haunted by another calling, another whisper in his heart. He inquired about his prospects with a certain missionary order and then made a decision – after much contemplation and correspondence with Father John Blowick (1888-1972, co-founder of the Missionary Society of Saint Columban).
On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, December 8, 1917, the middle-age priest decided that he would join the Columban Fathers in their Maynooth Mission to China.
Once in their new home, the newcomers immediately immersed themselves in the Chinese language with its multiplicity of tones. Each morning, they sat with their teacher, a native speaker, and first learned simple idioms and phrases through repetition and memorization. Gradually, they challenged themselves with simple sentences, slowly increased the difficulty, and, after a few weeks, mastered about 300 sentences.
Between language lessons, they experienced life lessons of inspiration and moments of enchantment.
Just two months after their arrival, in the dark of night, about 9:30, when the hour arrived to extinguish lights and welcome the Grand Silence, the priests heard a cacophony of cymbal clanging and drum banging. Outside, men, women and children tried to frighten away the mythical dog taking a bite out of the moon, during a lunar eclipse, on October 27, 1920.
For their first Midnight Mass in their new mission, the Columban Fathers threw open the doors of their church, originally built by American Baptists, long gone. The pews filled with about 100 locals, who fervently sing-song chanted their prayers with heart and soul. Not only did they attend the high Mass, with about half receiving Communion, but the majority refused to leave. Filled with the fire of the Holy Ghost, they remained in the church the entire night, for their own prayers and devotions, waiting for the 6 a.m. Mass.
After the holydays and five months of language immersion, Father Tierney was ready to venture off to a mission, in Shinti, in January 1921. After a bit of boating about 100 miles farther up the Yangtze, he joined a Chinese priest, to meet the people, to learn the local dialect and, perhaps, to eventually take over.
In a deeply entrenched pagan land, even though Christians and non-Christians alike often showed up at church for material goods rather than spiritual riches, Father Tierney remained hopeful. And for good reason. Success. In the church register, from August 15, 1922, to August 15, 1923, he recorded 153 baptisms of pagans, 19 baptisms of children of Catholics, and 20-odd baptisms of pagan children in danger of death...
Father Cornelius Tierney
A Real Missionary of Mercy
Like a gigantic three-tier birthday cake with wisps of smoke rising from extinguished candles, the Woong Woo steamboat – and its billowing smokestacks – floated 525 slow miles along the Chang Jiang, the Long River known around the world as the Yangtze River.
Nearing its destination, crewmembers steered the vessel landward and pulled alongshore, on August 21, 1920, with precious cargo aboard: Irish missionaries, 11 men who made up a squad in the Church Militant’s army of the Missionary Society of Saint Columban.
Five months earlier, in March, the long voyage began with final goodbyes in Dalgan Park, the order’s headquarters in Shrule, County Mayo. Chugging across the Atlantic Ocean to an ante-aeronautical United States of America, they traversed by land the wind-whipped prairies, the snow-capped mountains and the blossom-filled deserts to the West Coast, where they boarded a trans-Pacific Ocean liner to the pre-Communist Republic of China.
From the unsteady gangplank¸ the priests stepped onto foreign soil in Wuhan’s Hanyang District, in Hupei (old form of Hubei) province and entered an ancient world in the East, centuries behind the industrialized West, but where the Catholic priestly garb of the cassock blended seamlessly with the Chinese gown and its Mandarin collar.
On the way to their new residence, the Irishmen passed along streets so narrow they could stretch out their arms and touch with their fingertips the houses on both sides at the same time, as they splashed through puddles of a glistening-green water emitting a pungent smell, like an old sewer simmering in the sun on a scorching summer’s day.
Outside the noisy town, the men reached their mission, where several rented houses stood near one another, each with at least a dozen rooms, light and airy, all within a stone’s throw from a lake choked with lotus plants.
Father Cornelius Tierney (1871-1931, Missionary Society of Saint Columban), nearly 49 years old, was the eldest. More weathered than his freshly ordained confreres, he had received the Sacrament of Holy Orders, in 1899, for the Clogher diocese, and, subsequently, had taught Irish and the Classics.
So it was a bit surprising when he had felt haunted by another calling, another whisper in his heart. He inquired about his prospects with a certain missionary order and then made a decision – after much contemplation and correspondence with Father John Blowick (1888-1972, co-founder of the Missionary Society of Saint Columban).
On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, December 8, 1917, the middle-age priest decided that he would join the Columban Fathers in their Maynooth Mission to China.
Once in their new home, the newcomers immediately immersed themselves in the Chinese language with its multiplicity of tones. Each morning, they sat with their teacher, a native speaker, and first learned simple idioms and phrases through repetition and memorization. Gradually, they challenged themselves with simple sentences, slowly increased the difficulty, and, after a few weeks, mastered about 300 sentences.
Between language lessons, they experienced life lessons of inspiration and moments of enchantment.
Just two months after their arrival, in the dark of night, about 9:30, when the hour arrived to extinguish lights and welcome the Grand Silence, the priests heard a cacophony of cymbal clanging and drum banging. Outside, men, women and children tried to frighten away the mythical dog taking a bite out of the moon, during a lunar eclipse, on October 27, 1920.
For their first Midnight Mass in their new mission, the Columban Fathers threw open the doors of their church, originally built by American Baptists, long gone. The pews filled with about 100 locals, who fervently sing-song chanted their prayers with heart and soul. Not only did they attend the high Mass, with about half receiving Communion, but the majority refused to leave. Filled with the fire of the Holy Ghost, they remained in the church the entire night, for their own prayers and devotions, waiting for the 6 a.m. Mass.
After the holydays and five months of language immersion, Father Tierney was ready to venture off to a mission, in Shinti, in January 1921. After a bit of boating about 100 miles farther up the Yangtze, he joined a Chinese priest, to meet the people, to learn the local dialect and, perhaps, to eventually take over.
In a deeply entrenched pagan land, even though Christians and non-Christians alike often showed up at church for material goods rather than spiritual riches, Father Tierney remained hopeful. And for good reason. Success. In the church register, from August 15, 1922, to August 15, 1923, he recorded 153 baptisms of pagans, 19 baptisms of children of Catholics, and 20-odd baptisms of pagan children in danger of death...
STORY 3
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...
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...
STORY 4
Persecution and Anti-Catholic Propaganda
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, brutal.
But in the reports, something seemed eerily familiar. Similar accounts can be found in historical works, in thick volumes of aging, yellowing pages pulled from shelves. For more than 60 years ago, the same sort of false accusations targeted Catholic missionaries in the People’s Republic of China after the Communist takeover.
Here’s what happened:
Babies. Syphilitic, illegitimate, deformed, unwanted, diseased, blind.
Abandoned. Tossed aside in alleyways of China’s cities, along dirt ways of lonely villages, atop dunes of dust on windy stretches of desert, among rock-filled passageways atop mountains, amid empty tombs of silent cemeteries.
Murdered. Dumped in the trash, laid out for wild dogs, flung into rivers, dropped down wells, suffocated with vinegar-soaked paper, starved, buried alive.
That was the macabre life and death that greeted Catholic missionaries upon their arrival in mainland China during the first half of the 20th century, when their callings put into practice Christ’s Second Great Commandment: Love thy neighbor as thyself – a supranational, supernatural compassion for all God’s creatures.
In Oriental villages and cities, Occidental women in flowing veils and habits opened orphanages and dispensaries to accommodate a desperate need, to protect, comfort and aid the smallest and weakest victims of human neglect and cruelty: abandoned babies.
Countless infants, mostly girls, arrived at the missions. Some found alive by strangers, some by police. Some delivered in the dark of night at the doorstep or dropped into a basket left outside for wriggling bundles. Some rescued by elderly parishioners, who received a few cents for each baby found during daily searches of garbage heaps, water fronts and dark corners.
Too few rescued before it was too late, most never survived the rough starts in their innocent lives. Too sick. Too chewed up. Too malnourished. Too beyond life. Most, more than 70 percent, arrived at the foundling homes dead or near dead.
Heeding charity, the religious did the best they could in the worst possible circumstances. With the little, helpless bodies in their arms, believing in the immortality of the soul, the nuns, in their Angelic work, baptized the dying. For the dead, a final solace, a respectful burial for a disrespected soul. In the mission’s private, Catholic cemetery, a common grave was set aside for the many interments of the many dead babies.
In addition to the arrivals, day in and day out, the selfless nuns – under constant stress, with stretched resources and frazzled nerves, battered psychologically and scarred emotionally – battled the ever-present threat of deadly diseases and infections, such as measles, whooping cough, smallpox, polio, tuberculosis, influenza, pneumonia and pleurisy, among others, which stole countless lives.
Fortunately, some babies survived and even thrived. In 1949, 254 Catholic orphanages throughout mainland China cared for as many as 15,698 discarded children.
That was before the Communists seized control of the country.
When the Reds grabbed the whip of power, in 1949, they promised freedom of religion and protection of foreigners’ property; however, as new masters, they methodically began a nationwide inventory, with constant updating, in all spheres of the society over which they ruled. They wanted a thorough accounting, for under Communist rule everything and everyone is controlled by, if not owned by, the People’s Government.
For the first year or so, regime toadies visited each residence, business and institution, wrote extensive notes and detailed lists of property and of persons: foreign and domestic, landowner and peasant, bourgeois and worker, counterrevolutionary and revolutionary.
When completed, depending on the area, authorities set into motion their control over population and possessions. After the initial purges of their political enemies, used as a tool to instill fear into the masses, the regime began to implement the redistribution of wealth, of which a great deal slipped into their own Party pockets.
The Communists wanted all private real estate and all valuable personal property to go to the State, the People’s Government, which was in charge of and in control of production and distribution.
Here are just a few of the mandates:
All institutions run by foreigners were to appoint Chinese directors, by December 17, 1950;
All organizations receiving funds from the United States of America, considered imperialistic foreign devils, were to be taken over by the Chinese Central Relief Association, as decreed by the National State Council of Communist China, on December 29, 1950;
All landowners, Chinese or foreign, were to send titles and deeds to the People’s Government, no later than February 6, 1951;
All businesses and institutions controlled directly by foreigners were charged excessive taxation and forced to obey overreaching regulations, to ensure a quick, inevitable insolvency;
And for all others, the authorities seized by another type of coercion: In a by-force policy of fear and intimidation, they charged landowners with trumped-up crimes, distorted to dispossess land and possessions from the possessors. Victims found themselves under attack, with false accusations exaggerated in the state-owned-and-operated media for propaganda purposes.
Those who ran Catholic orphanages found themselves under attack...
Persecution and Anti-Catholic Propaganda
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, brutal.
But in the reports, something seemed eerily familiar. Similar accounts can be found in historical works, in thick volumes of aging, yellowing pages pulled from shelves. For more than 60 years ago, the same sort of false accusations targeted Catholic missionaries in the People’s Republic of China after the Communist takeover.
Here’s what happened:
Babies. Syphilitic, illegitimate, deformed, unwanted, diseased, blind.
Abandoned. Tossed aside in alleyways of China’s cities, along dirt ways of lonely villages, atop dunes of dust on windy stretches of desert, among rock-filled passageways atop mountains, amid empty tombs of silent cemeteries.
Murdered. Dumped in the trash, laid out for wild dogs, flung into rivers, dropped down wells, suffocated with vinegar-soaked paper, starved, buried alive.
That was the macabre life and death that greeted Catholic missionaries upon their arrival in mainland China during the first half of the 20th century, when their callings put into practice Christ’s Second Great Commandment: Love thy neighbor as thyself – a supranational, supernatural compassion for all God’s creatures.
In Oriental villages and cities, Occidental women in flowing veils and habits opened orphanages and dispensaries to accommodate a desperate need, to protect, comfort and aid the smallest and weakest victims of human neglect and cruelty: abandoned babies.
Countless infants, mostly girls, arrived at the missions. Some found alive by strangers, some by police. Some delivered in the dark of night at the doorstep or dropped into a basket left outside for wriggling bundles. Some rescued by elderly parishioners, who received a few cents for each baby found during daily searches of garbage heaps, water fronts and dark corners.
Too few rescued before it was too late, most never survived the rough starts in their innocent lives. Too sick. Too chewed up. Too malnourished. Too beyond life. Most, more than 70 percent, arrived at the foundling homes dead or near dead.
Heeding charity, the religious did the best they could in the worst possible circumstances. With the little, helpless bodies in their arms, believing in the immortality of the soul, the nuns, in their Angelic work, baptized the dying. For the dead, a final solace, a respectful burial for a disrespected soul. In the mission’s private, Catholic cemetery, a common grave was set aside for the many interments of the many dead babies.
In addition to the arrivals, day in and day out, the selfless nuns – under constant stress, with stretched resources and frazzled nerves, battered psychologically and scarred emotionally – battled the ever-present threat of deadly diseases and infections, such as measles, whooping cough, smallpox, polio, tuberculosis, influenza, pneumonia and pleurisy, among others, which stole countless lives.
Fortunately, some babies survived and even thrived. In 1949, 254 Catholic orphanages throughout mainland China cared for as many as 15,698 discarded children.
That was before the Communists seized control of the country.
When the Reds grabbed the whip of power, in 1949, they promised freedom of religion and protection of foreigners’ property; however, as new masters, they methodically began a nationwide inventory, with constant updating, in all spheres of the society over which they ruled. They wanted a thorough accounting, for under Communist rule everything and everyone is controlled by, if not owned by, the People’s Government.
For the first year or so, regime toadies visited each residence, business and institution, wrote extensive notes and detailed lists of property and of persons: foreign and domestic, landowner and peasant, bourgeois and worker, counterrevolutionary and revolutionary.
When completed, depending on the area, authorities set into motion their control over population and possessions. After the initial purges of their political enemies, used as a tool to instill fear into the masses, the regime began to implement the redistribution of wealth, of which a great deal slipped into their own Party pockets.
The Communists wanted all private real estate and all valuable personal property to go to the State, the People’s Government, which was in charge of and in control of production and distribution.
Here are just a few of the mandates:
All institutions run by foreigners were to appoint Chinese directors, by December 17, 1950;
All organizations receiving funds from the United States of America, considered imperialistic foreign devils, were to be taken over by the Chinese Central Relief Association, as decreed by the National State Council of Communist China, on December 29, 1950;
All landowners, Chinese or foreign, were to send titles and deeds to the People’s Government, no later than February 6, 1951;
All businesses and institutions controlled directly by foreigners were charged excessive taxation and forced to obey overreaching regulations, to ensure a quick, inevitable insolvency;
And for all others, the authorities seized by another type of coercion: In a by-force policy of fear and intimidation, they charged landowners with trumped-up crimes, distorted to dispossess land and possessions from the possessors. Victims found themselves under attack, with false accusations exaggerated in the state-owned-and-operated media for propaganda purposes.
Those who ran Catholic orphanages found themselves under attack...
STORY 5
Father Yann Billot
Intruders muscled their way inside Tousewe Catholic Orphan Asylum, one inauspicious night in Shanghai, March 1952.
“Billot is to come with us to the Security Police. He can no longer act as director of this orphanage, by order of the People’s Government,” a Communist authority read from a summons clutched in his hand.
Dozens of orphans, adolescent and teenage boys, surrounded the uninvited strangers and immediately protested the arrest of their director, Father Yann Billot (1901-83, Society of Jesus).
“We are the People!” they yelled. “We are the Government!”
Forming a human shield around the priest, they rushed him to his room on the third floor of the orphanage, crowded around the door to guard their own guardian and blocked the stairway, preventing any of the officers from gaining access.
And so they stood.
The orphans refused to yield, and the authorities refused to concede defeat. Rather than retreat, they insisted and assured the young bodyguards that the foreigner would only have to report to the police station and then would be able to immediately return home.
But the boys knew better than to trust the untrustworthy.
Since May 1949 – when mud-spattered Communist troops marched victoriously into Shanghai after stomping the Nationalist soldiers in the outskirts of the city – the Catholic faithful learned of priest after priest, native and foreign-born, dragged off to harrowing prisons or torturous detention centers.
Some returned alive, some returned dead, some never returned.
After a two-hour stalemate, Father Billot coaxed his protectors to step aside, as he voluntarily emerged from his room. In an attempt to avoid more trouble, he surrendered to the police and agreed to go with them. But he didn’t go alone. From the orphanage to the station, all the way through the Zikawei (Shanghainese for Xujiahui) District, more than 125 orphans surrounded their director and noisily passed through the streets.
“This is a good man!” they yelled.
“This is a man without fault!” they testified in shouts to the men, women and children, who vacated storefronts, food stalls and homes, to fill the streets and crane their necks to see who screamed and why.
“We protest his arrest!” the orphans hollered.
Once at their destination, Father Billot breached his line of defense, climbed the steps, paused, turned toward his crusaders, raised his hand, blessed them, turned back around and disappeared from view as he passed through the entryway.
Determined to wait, the orphans pitched camp and resolutely stationed themselves in a semicircle outside the entrance. Observing all, the youthful sentries watched the front door open and close, as they looked for the reappearance of the spiritual father of their orphanage.
Tousewe Catholic Orphan Asylum had been established by Catholic missionaries, in 1864, at 448 old Phushi (Shanghainese for Puxi) Road. Waifs received not only shelter, food and clothing, but also a basic education, with an additional two years of training in a skill or a trade – such as blacksmithing, bookbinding, carpentry, mechanical arts, metalwork, painting, printing, stained glass, statuary or woodwork – in one of the institution’s world-class, world-renowned, award-winning technical schools and workshops.
While waiting for the re-emergence of their director, little did they foresee that within a year, the Communist Civil Affairs Bureau would not only expel all orphans from Tousewe (Shanghainese for Tushanwan; translation: the mound at the turn in the way), but the regime would also grab control of all workshops, for the Communist State owned and controlled all means of production and distribution.
After two hours, the door swung open one more time and there stood their shepherd at the top of the steps, ready to tend to his lambs.
“Father Billot!” they joyfully shouted and ran to him, cheering all the way back home.
Once more at the orphanage, the young men did their best to give their priest around-the-clock protection to prevent any attempt of abduction; however, only a few days later, predatory police officers took advantage of the dark night, swooped in and snatched him up.
Father Billot’s orphans never saw him again.
Locked up in notorious Shanghai Municipal Prison, commonly called Tilanqiao (translation: carry basket bridge) by local Shanghainese, the Catholic missionary found himself in the hands of harsh interrogators: 19 times for several hours at a time. When he refused to sign his coerced “confession,” his torturers pulled his arms behind his back and tightly clamped on a pair of manacles, which dug into his flesh, relentlessly, for the next 24 hours.
After languishing in prison for 10 months, Father Billot fell ill with pleurisy, a painful inflammation of the lining of the lungs.
Transferred to the prison’s infirmary, he noticed another priest, Father Shih-Hsien “Joseph” Shen (old form of Shixian Shen, 1917-53), suffering on a bed nearby. He had been arrested 16 months earlier, on September 7, 1951, the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Legion of Mary, an organization the Communist-led People’s
Government considered an enemy of the State...
Father Yann Billot
Intruders muscled their way inside Tousewe Catholic Orphan Asylum, one inauspicious night in Shanghai, March 1952.
“Billot is to come with us to the Security Police. He can no longer act as director of this orphanage, by order of the People’s Government,” a Communist authority read from a summons clutched in his hand.
Dozens of orphans, adolescent and teenage boys, surrounded the uninvited strangers and immediately protested the arrest of their director, Father Yann Billot (1901-83, Society of Jesus).
“We are the People!” they yelled. “We are the Government!”
Forming a human shield around the priest, they rushed him to his room on the third floor of the orphanage, crowded around the door to guard their own guardian and blocked the stairway, preventing any of the officers from gaining access.
And so they stood.
The orphans refused to yield, and the authorities refused to concede defeat. Rather than retreat, they insisted and assured the young bodyguards that the foreigner would only have to report to the police station and then would be able to immediately return home.
But the boys knew better than to trust the untrustworthy.
Since May 1949 – when mud-spattered Communist troops marched victoriously into Shanghai after stomping the Nationalist soldiers in the outskirts of the city – the Catholic faithful learned of priest after priest, native and foreign-born, dragged off to harrowing prisons or torturous detention centers.
Some returned alive, some returned dead, some never returned.
After a two-hour stalemate, Father Billot coaxed his protectors to step aside, as he voluntarily emerged from his room. In an attempt to avoid more trouble, he surrendered to the police and agreed to go with them. But he didn’t go alone. From the orphanage to the station, all the way through the Zikawei (Shanghainese for Xujiahui) District, more than 125 orphans surrounded their director and noisily passed through the streets.
“This is a good man!” they yelled.
“This is a man without fault!” they testified in shouts to the men, women and children, who vacated storefronts, food stalls and homes, to fill the streets and crane their necks to see who screamed and why.
“We protest his arrest!” the orphans hollered.
Once at their destination, Father Billot breached his line of defense, climbed the steps, paused, turned toward his crusaders, raised his hand, blessed them, turned back around and disappeared from view as he passed through the entryway.
Determined to wait, the orphans pitched camp and resolutely stationed themselves in a semicircle outside the entrance. Observing all, the youthful sentries watched the front door open and close, as they looked for the reappearance of the spiritual father of their orphanage.
Tousewe Catholic Orphan Asylum had been established by Catholic missionaries, in 1864, at 448 old Phushi (Shanghainese for Puxi) Road. Waifs received not only shelter, food and clothing, but also a basic education, with an additional two years of training in a skill or a trade – such as blacksmithing, bookbinding, carpentry, mechanical arts, metalwork, painting, printing, stained glass, statuary or woodwork – in one of the institution’s world-class, world-renowned, award-winning technical schools and workshops.
While waiting for the re-emergence of their director, little did they foresee that within a year, the Communist Civil Affairs Bureau would not only expel all orphans from Tousewe (Shanghainese for Tushanwan; translation: the mound at the turn in the way), but the regime would also grab control of all workshops, for the Communist State owned and controlled all means of production and distribution.
After two hours, the door swung open one more time and there stood their shepherd at the top of the steps, ready to tend to his lambs.
“Father Billot!” they joyfully shouted and ran to him, cheering all the way back home.
Once more at the orphanage, the young men did their best to give their priest around-the-clock protection to prevent any attempt of abduction; however, only a few days later, predatory police officers took advantage of the dark night, swooped in and snatched him up.
Father Billot’s orphans never saw him again.
Locked up in notorious Shanghai Municipal Prison, commonly called Tilanqiao (translation: carry basket bridge) by local Shanghainese, the Catholic missionary found himself in the hands of harsh interrogators: 19 times for several hours at a time. When he refused to sign his coerced “confession,” his torturers pulled his arms behind his back and tightly clamped on a pair of manacles, which dug into his flesh, relentlessly, for the next 24 hours.
After languishing in prison for 10 months, Father Billot fell ill with pleurisy, a painful inflammation of the lining of the lungs.
Transferred to the prison’s infirmary, he noticed another priest, Father Shih-Hsien “Joseph” Shen (old form of Shixian Shen, 1917-53), suffering on a bed nearby. He had been arrested 16 months earlier, on September 7, 1951, the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Legion of Mary, an organization the Communist-led People’s
Government considered an enemy of the State...
STORY 6
Warrior Priest
The Battle for the Soul of China
Nearly midnight, a single ring from the doorbell echoed through the rectory.
With a big smile on his face, Father Malachy Murphy (1920-71, Missionary Society of Saint Columban) walked toward the entrance, on September 6, 1951, expecting friends from Huchou (old form of Huzhou) to be on the other side of the door to the Columban residence.
Instead, he found 11 police officers, all wearing white caps and drab green uniforms, standing dour-faced on the front steps. One pointed a submachine gun. His 10 comrades brandished pistols.
Stationed around the perimeter of the three-story building, at 287 Rue Maresca (former name of Wuyuan Road), in Shanghai’s French Concession, 200 officers from the Military Control Bureau stood watch. Their job: to make certain no one fled.
Father Murphy alerted his superior, Father Edward MacElroy (1911-80, Missionary Society of Saint Columban), who promptly greeted his unwelcome guests.
“We want the names of everyone here,” one of the officers demanded of Father MacElroy, who methodically ran down the litany of resident priests, finally arriving at the name of Father William Aedan McGrath (1906-2000, Missionary Society of Saint Columban).
“That’s the one we want,” the officer announced. “He’s being arrested on suspicion.”
“On suspicion of what?” Father MacElroy wanted to know.
“Read tomorrow’s paper,” taunted the officer, as he and the others pushed their way inside and advanced upstairs to the second floor, on reconnaissance for Father McGrath (pronounced mə-GRÆ), deemed an enemy of State for his role as spiritual director to the Legion of Mary, a Roman Catholic laity-based organization.
Previously anticipating his arrest, the missionary had already destroyed photographs and writings, any evidence that may have incriminated anyone involved with the Legion.
For the next hour, authorities ransacked his Spartan room, with its bed, desk, nightstand, book of Gospels and copy of “My Imitation of Christ,” by Thomas à Kempis. Of interest to the intruders: only a few photos of his family back home in Ireland and a long-wave radio, which received nothing but local radio stations, but on which he would be accused of tapping out messages to the United States of America.
After placing their foreign enemy under arrest, the officers stood, sticking the muzzles of their Browning handguns into his ribs, posing for propaganda photos snapped by a young, Communist woman with a Leica camera. As soon as the flashbulbs stopped popping, they pushed the priest out of his room and into the hallway, where he knelt and requested absolution from the rectory superior, who obliged, against the protests of the authorities.
“Keep your chin up,” Father MacElroy advised, as he stuffed a bundle – consisting of a Foxford rug remnant, a military rug and a couple cardigans – into the arms of his departing confrere.
On his way out, Father McGrath happened to look at his watch. It was 1 a.m.
It’s now September 7, the vigil of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the foundation day of the Legion of Mary, he thought, chuckling. The Communists have selected a good day, today.
Forced into an American-manufactured passenger car, he sat between two officers, and the car jolted forward as a military vehicle ahead, filled with more military officers, sped off. Minutes later, the political prisoner arrived at his new residence: police headquarters in Lokawei (former name of Luwan) District.
More than 20 years earlier, Father McGrath arrived in China, after departing his hometown of Dublin, during a period in time when the fastest route from the Occident to the Orient was a stomach-launching voyage aboard an ocean liner.
After six weeks of excruciating travel, the newly ordained 24-year-old priest arrived, in August 1930, at a dock in Shanghai, China’s port city, with its British and American International Settlement that neighbored the French Concession, known as the Paris of the Orient.
Onward, he floated, four more days and 700 miles westward on the Yangtze River, the flowing water that girdles China’s great expanse. At last, he arrived at his destination: the Hanyang diocese, in the province of Hupei (old form of Hubei).
During the early stages of acclimation to his new life, the missionary received an order to report to Bishop Edward Galvin (1882-1956), who had co-founded with Father John Blowick (1888-1972) the Missionary Society of Saint Columban, in 1918.
A poor bishop, he was short of priests, short of money, but blessed with a vast territory of souls needing salvation.
At the Columban headquarters, Father McGrath was to learn of his first big assignment.
“Aedan, I’m sending you to Tsienkiang, a parish that no priest has been to, so far. I’m sorry to say there is no church there. I’m even more sorry to say there is no house. And don’t ever expect a church or a house in that place. I don’t know what you’ll do or where you’ll live, but do your best. In God’s name, go,” his superior announced.
Off flew the fledgling priest, 100 miles to Tsienkiang (old form of Qianjiang), in Hupei province, where he would remain for the next 16 years, the only spiritual father to a flock scattered throughout 24 outlying mission villages. Without a car, or even roads, he walked the dirt paths for one day’s journey from one village to the next, where he bunked down for a few days as an honored guest with parishioners in their mud-and-straw huts. It took two months to cover his parish, where he baptized newborns, instructed catechumens, absolved penitential confessants, officiated marriages, buried the dead and blessed graves. Whatever needed to be done, he did it. He had no choice. There was no one else.
Well into his first year, already emotionally drained and physically exhausted, Father McGrath pleaded with Bishop Galvin to send him backup. A priest. A nun. Anyone...
Warrior Priest
The Battle for the Soul of China
Nearly midnight, a single ring from the doorbell echoed through the rectory.
With a big smile on his face, Father Malachy Murphy (1920-71, Missionary Society of Saint Columban) walked toward the entrance, on September 6, 1951, expecting friends from Huchou (old form of Huzhou) to be on the other side of the door to the Columban residence.
Instead, he found 11 police officers, all wearing white caps and drab green uniforms, standing dour-faced on the front steps. One pointed a submachine gun. His 10 comrades brandished pistols.
Stationed around the perimeter of the three-story building, at 287 Rue Maresca (former name of Wuyuan Road), in Shanghai’s French Concession, 200 officers from the Military Control Bureau stood watch. Their job: to make certain no one fled.
Father Murphy alerted his superior, Father Edward MacElroy (1911-80, Missionary Society of Saint Columban), who promptly greeted his unwelcome guests.
“We want the names of everyone here,” one of the officers demanded of Father MacElroy, who methodically ran down the litany of resident priests, finally arriving at the name of Father William Aedan McGrath (1906-2000, Missionary Society of Saint Columban).
“That’s the one we want,” the officer announced. “He’s being arrested on suspicion.”
“On suspicion of what?” Father MacElroy wanted to know.
“Read tomorrow’s paper,” taunted the officer, as he and the others pushed their way inside and advanced upstairs to the second floor, on reconnaissance for Father McGrath (pronounced mə-GRÆ), deemed an enemy of State for his role as spiritual director to the Legion of Mary, a Roman Catholic laity-based organization.
Previously anticipating his arrest, the missionary had already destroyed photographs and writings, any evidence that may have incriminated anyone involved with the Legion.
For the next hour, authorities ransacked his Spartan room, with its bed, desk, nightstand, book of Gospels and copy of “My Imitation of Christ,” by Thomas à Kempis. Of interest to the intruders: only a few photos of his family back home in Ireland and a long-wave radio, which received nothing but local radio stations, but on which he would be accused of tapping out messages to the United States of America.
After placing their foreign enemy under arrest, the officers stood, sticking the muzzles of their Browning handguns into his ribs, posing for propaganda photos snapped by a young, Communist woman with a Leica camera. As soon as the flashbulbs stopped popping, they pushed the priest out of his room and into the hallway, where he knelt and requested absolution from the rectory superior, who obliged, against the protests of the authorities.
“Keep your chin up,” Father MacElroy advised, as he stuffed a bundle – consisting of a Foxford rug remnant, a military rug and a couple cardigans – into the arms of his departing confrere.
On his way out, Father McGrath happened to look at his watch. It was 1 a.m.
It’s now September 7, the vigil of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the foundation day of the Legion of Mary, he thought, chuckling. The Communists have selected a good day, today.
Forced into an American-manufactured passenger car, he sat between two officers, and the car jolted forward as a military vehicle ahead, filled with more military officers, sped off. Minutes later, the political prisoner arrived at his new residence: police headquarters in Lokawei (former name of Luwan) District.
More than 20 years earlier, Father McGrath arrived in China, after departing his hometown of Dublin, during a period in time when the fastest route from the Occident to the Orient was a stomach-launching voyage aboard an ocean liner.
After six weeks of excruciating travel, the newly ordained 24-year-old priest arrived, in August 1930, at a dock in Shanghai, China’s port city, with its British and American International Settlement that neighbored the French Concession, known as the Paris of the Orient.
Onward, he floated, four more days and 700 miles westward on the Yangtze River, the flowing water that girdles China’s great expanse. At last, he arrived at his destination: the Hanyang diocese, in the province of Hupei (old form of Hubei).
During the early stages of acclimation to his new life, the missionary received an order to report to Bishop Edward Galvin (1882-1956), who had co-founded with Father John Blowick (1888-1972) the Missionary Society of Saint Columban, in 1918.
A poor bishop, he was short of priests, short of money, but blessed with a vast territory of souls needing salvation.
At the Columban headquarters, Father McGrath was to learn of his first big assignment.
“Aedan, I’m sending you to Tsienkiang, a parish that no priest has been to, so far. I’m sorry to say there is no church there. I’m even more sorry to say there is no house. And don’t ever expect a church or a house in that place. I don’t know what you’ll do or where you’ll live, but do your best. In God’s name, go,” his superior announced.
Off flew the fledgling priest, 100 miles to Tsienkiang (old form of Qianjiang), in Hupei province, where he would remain for the next 16 years, the only spiritual father to a flock scattered throughout 24 outlying mission villages. Without a car, or even roads, he walked the dirt paths for one day’s journey from one village to the next, where he bunked down for a few days as an honored guest with parishioners in their mud-and-straw huts. It took two months to cover his parish, where he baptized newborns, instructed catechumens, absolved penitential confessants, officiated marriages, buried the dead and blessed graves. Whatever needed to be done, he did it. He had no choice. There was no one else.
Well into his first year, already emotionally drained and physically exhausted, Father McGrath pleaded with Bishop Galvin to send him backup. A priest. A nun. Anyone...
STORY 7
China’s Doorman
Father Ambrogio Poletti
Under the brim of a grimy, frayed newsboy cap, two sunken eyes rimmed in black stared straight ahead from their sockets, as if frozen from fear.
A scraggly beard hung like gray stalactites from cavernous cheeks. Bald patches mapped where torturers had plucked hairs during interrogations.
Upon a stretcher lay an Italian bishop, 63 years old, frail and weak. His black tunic and dirt-stained pants draped loosely over his bones. Chinese black-cloth shoes – wrapped around and tied with bits of twine – swaddled his swollen feet.
After three years and seven months in a Chinese Communist prison, Bishop Alfonso Maria Corrado Ferroni (1892-1966, Order of Friars Minor) weighed no more than 70 pounds, down from 180, a loss of 110 pounds.
“Welcome to freedom. It’s all right now. It’s all over,” whispered Father Ambrogio Poletti (1905-73, Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions), on the bishop’s first day of liberty: September 17, 1955, the Feast of the Impression of the Stigmata of Saint Francis.
Father Poletti always welcomed those who reached Lo Wu Bridge, the Bridge of Freedom that spanned the border between the People’s Republic of China and the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, the border between Communism and Colonialism, Marxism and Capitalism, savagery and civilization, slavery and freedom, materialism and spiritualism, oppression and compassion, death and life.
Some walked the short distance from the land under the Five-star Red Flag – symbolism of bloody Revolution – to the land under the Union Jack, emblazoned with the three Christian crosses of Saint George, Saint Patrick and Saint Andrew, symbolism of charitable love.
Some arrived dead. Some nearly dead. Some out of their minds after years of sadistic abuse, starvation, humiliation, interrogations. Some limped. Some collapsed. Some carried. One Jesuit priest ran past the barbed-wire barrier, screaming, insane from the physical, emotional and mental torments he had endured.
After the Communists gained control of the mainland, in 1949, the enforcers of the godless, materialistic ideology launched religious persecution against the believers of the God on the Cross. Those who refused to renounce the Church of the Imperialist West were arrested, imprisoned, interrogated, tortured. The regime’s aim: control native Catholics and rid the country of foreign dogs.
Father Poletti gently lifted the bishop from the canvas litter and, with the help of British Police Superintendent A.L. Gordon, carried the living corpse across the train tracks and across Lo Wu Bridge, a main crossing point at the border.
Born on February 1, 1892, in Rignano sull’Arno, in Italy’s Florence province, Bishop Ferroni had been ordained in 1920. Assigned, in 1922, to China, he spent 30 years ministering to orphans and widows, as well as the sick, dying, poor, hungry and needy. In 1932, he was consecrated bishop of Laohokow (old form of Laohekou) diocese, settled on the banks of the Han River, in Hupei (old form of Hubei) province.
Arrested in February 1952, he was handcuffed for the first three months, leaving permanent scarring on his flesh. During his entire incarceration, he remained in solitary confinement, suffering torture, deprivation, starvation, beriberi. All that time, he never had clarification of the charges against him.
Banished forever from the mainland, the nearly dead Bishop Ferroni barely survived the 700-mile journey from north of the Yangtze River, southward, to the Pearl River Delta.
Upon his arrival, no one had been expecting him.
As Father Poletti comforted the ailing prelate, a British policeman at Lo Wu Station sent a telegram, at 2:30 in the afternoon, to the Franciscan Missions of Hong Kong, with a message: “The bishop of Laohokow has just arrived from China.”
Authorities placed the delirious bishop inside an ambulance, where he muttered repeatedly, “You can’t change my mind. You can’t change my ideas,” as the emergency medical team rushed him to Saint Teresa’s Hospital, 327 Prince Edward Road, in Kowloon, founded in 1940 by the Sisters of Saint Paul de Chartres.
After his arrival and admittance to the Catholic medical facility, he continued mumbling about the “loudspeakers,” “Communist radio” and “lights,” torture tools used against him during interrogations.
During the first day in the hospital, he received urgent care, including a blood transfusion. On the second day, death looked so certain that a priest administered the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, the anointing of the Last Rites, a preparation for death as well as a prayer for recovery...
China’s Doorman
Father Ambrogio Poletti
Under the brim of a grimy, frayed newsboy cap, two sunken eyes rimmed in black stared straight ahead from their sockets, as if frozen from fear.
A scraggly beard hung like gray stalactites from cavernous cheeks. Bald patches mapped where torturers had plucked hairs during interrogations.
Upon a stretcher lay an Italian bishop, 63 years old, frail and weak. His black tunic and dirt-stained pants draped loosely over his bones. Chinese black-cloth shoes – wrapped around and tied with bits of twine – swaddled his swollen feet.
After three years and seven months in a Chinese Communist prison, Bishop Alfonso Maria Corrado Ferroni (1892-1966, Order of Friars Minor) weighed no more than 70 pounds, down from 180, a loss of 110 pounds.
“Welcome to freedom. It’s all right now. It’s all over,” whispered Father Ambrogio Poletti (1905-73, Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions), on the bishop’s first day of liberty: September 17, 1955, the Feast of the Impression of the Stigmata of Saint Francis.
Father Poletti always welcomed those who reached Lo Wu Bridge, the Bridge of Freedom that spanned the border between the People’s Republic of China and the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, the border between Communism and Colonialism, Marxism and Capitalism, savagery and civilization, slavery and freedom, materialism and spiritualism, oppression and compassion, death and life.
Some walked the short distance from the land under the Five-star Red Flag – symbolism of bloody Revolution – to the land under the Union Jack, emblazoned with the three Christian crosses of Saint George, Saint Patrick and Saint Andrew, symbolism of charitable love.
Some arrived dead. Some nearly dead. Some out of their minds after years of sadistic abuse, starvation, humiliation, interrogations. Some limped. Some collapsed. Some carried. One Jesuit priest ran past the barbed-wire barrier, screaming, insane from the physical, emotional and mental torments he had endured.
After the Communists gained control of the mainland, in 1949, the enforcers of the godless, materialistic ideology launched religious persecution against the believers of the God on the Cross. Those who refused to renounce the Church of the Imperialist West were arrested, imprisoned, interrogated, tortured. The regime’s aim: control native Catholics and rid the country of foreign dogs.
Father Poletti gently lifted the bishop from the canvas litter and, with the help of British Police Superintendent A.L. Gordon, carried the living corpse across the train tracks and across Lo Wu Bridge, a main crossing point at the border.
Born on February 1, 1892, in Rignano sull’Arno, in Italy’s Florence province, Bishop Ferroni had been ordained in 1920. Assigned, in 1922, to China, he spent 30 years ministering to orphans and widows, as well as the sick, dying, poor, hungry and needy. In 1932, he was consecrated bishop of Laohokow (old form of Laohekou) diocese, settled on the banks of the Han River, in Hupei (old form of Hubei) province.
Arrested in February 1952, he was handcuffed for the first three months, leaving permanent scarring on his flesh. During his entire incarceration, he remained in solitary confinement, suffering torture, deprivation, starvation, beriberi. All that time, he never had clarification of the charges against him.
Banished forever from the mainland, the nearly dead Bishop Ferroni barely survived the 700-mile journey from north of the Yangtze River, southward, to the Pearl River Delta.
Upon his arrival, no one had been expecting him.
As Father Poletti comforted the ailing prelate, a British policeman at Lo Wu Station sent a telegram, at 2:30 in the afternoon, to the Franciscan Missions of Hong Kong, with a message: “The bishop of Laohokow has just arrived from China.”
Authorities placed the delirious bishop inside an ambulance, where he muttered repeatedly, “You can’t change my mind. You can’t change my ideas,” as the emergency medical team rushed him to Saint Teresa’s Hospital, 327 Prince Edward Road, in Kowloon, founded in 1940 by the Sisters of Saint Paul de Chartres.
After his arrival and admittance to the Catholic medical facility, he continued mumbling about the “loudspeakers,” “Communist radio” and “lights,” torture tools used against him during interrogations.
During the first day in the hospital, he received urgent care, including a blood transfusion. On the second day, death looked so certain that a priest administered the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, the anointing of the Last Rites, a preparation for death as well as a prayer for recovery...
STORY 8
Mother Eamonn
Coaxed by her family for one final rendition of “Ach, I Dunno!” Mary “Molly” O’Sullivan sat at the piano in the Catholic convent and belted out the lyrics:
The convent is in a commotion
To think of me taking a spouse,
And they wonder I hadn’t the notion
Of taking the vows.
’Tis a beautiful life and a quiet
And keeps you from going below,
As a girl I thought I might try it,
But, ach, I dunno!
Laughing off the song, the light-spirited, zaftig colleen thus began her first day as a postulant, on September 16, 1935, seeking admission into the Lough Glynn Convent, named for the lake it overlooked in Ireland’s County Roscommon.
Blessed with a joyful and jocular nature, the gregarious Molly quickly found herself bound by the religious house’s restraints of self-disciplined conventions and regulations, such as: custody of the eyes, soft voice, noiseless walking, controlled laughter.
For six months, she struggled as she labored, prayed, made countless mistakes and raised many a brow of the understanding and charitable Mothers of the convent, established in 1903 by the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary.
But Molly also had attributes that flourished in the community.
Born in 1907, baptized Mary but always called Molly, she had answered Christ’s call a bit late in life and found herself about 10 years older than most other postulants, who admired her common sense and wisdom. And as the eldest of 10 children, whom she had helped raise in the O’Sullivan clan from County Cork, she was reliable and dependable.
Because of her age and her elder-sister sensibilities, she stood out as the one to go to for advice and support when little crises arose. Even the Mothers recommended postulants go to her if they preferred not to speak to superiors.
So it was no miracle that she survived her probationary candidacy and advanced to novice, on March 19, 1936.
During the Clothing Ceremony, in addition to the new ivory serge religious habit, she also received the greatest symbol of her new life, a new name, one which she had requested: Eamonn, Irish for Edward, the name of her father, who had died the previous year. Officially, Mother Mary of Saint Eamonn, simply called Mother Eamonn.
The following day, she packed her few things in a valise and left for her novitiate at Les Châtelets sous Bois, in France.
Two years later, on March 19, 1938, the Feast of Saint Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, she professed her temporary vows for the congregation founded, in 1877, by Mother Marie de la Passion (Hélène Marie Philippine de Chappotin de Neuville, 1839-1904), born in Nantes, France.
“Will you take Jesus Christ, Son of God most High, as your spouse forever?” asked the presiding bishop.
“Yes, I will, and desire to do so with all my heart.”
“Will you keep the vows of chastity, obedience and poverty according to the constitutions of the Institute?”
“Yes, I will, with the help of God.”
“Will you follow unto death Jesus crucified, in imitating His most pure mother and your seraphic father Saint Francis, offering yourself as a victim for the Church and the salvation of souls?”
“Yes, I will, with the help of God.”
“Will you consecrate yourself forever to the missions of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in accordance with holy obedience?”
“Yes, I will, with the help of God.”
Upon her finger she received a ring (symbol of betrothal to Christ as His spouse in chastity and fidelity) and upon her head a veil (symbol of consecration to the service of God and His Church).
As the bishop placed upon her veil a crown of thorns (symbol of shared suffering), he recited, “Receive this crown which your celestial spouse offers you, that you may be worthy to participate in his passion on earth and his glory in heaven.”
Mother Eamonn then pronounced her three vows of chastity, obedience and poverty, followed with the singing of “Te Deum,” the Church’s solemn hymn of thanksgiving.
Not long after the final notes floated heavenward, she received her assignment: the Republic of China. And she accepted her mission as the will of God, even though she understood the potential dangers, knowing full well the horrific details about the martyrdom of seven consoeurs, beheaded in odium fidei decades earlier:
After the seven Franciscan Missionaries of Mary arrived in Imperial China, on May 4, 1899, they immediately established an orphanage, for about 200 girls, and opened a dispensary while waiting for the construction of a hospital, in Taiyuan, in the province of Shanhsi (old form of Shanxi).
Unfortunately, their arrival coincided with the rise of the Boxer Rebellion, an anti-Christian killing spree at the turn of the century.
“Kill the foreigners! Slaughter the followers of the foreign devils!” was the motto of the Boxers, practitioners of martial arts.
When violence seemed imminent, Hsien Yü (old form of Xian Yu, 1842-1901), the province’s new governor later nicknamed the Butcher of Shanhsi, invited the seven Sisters and 38 other missionaries to safety in Taiyuan, promising them protection from the Boxers.
Tricked and trapped, the believers in Christ of the Cross stood helpless as a screaming mob wielding swords stormed the refuge, on July 9, 1900, and brutally decapitated all Christians, including the missionary Sisters, later hailed as the Seven Martyrs of Shanhsi...
Mother Eamonn
Coaxed by her family for one final rendition of “Ach, I Dunno!” Mary “Molly” O’Sullivan sat at the piano in the Catholic convent and belted out the lyrics:
The convent is in a commotion
To think of me taking a spouse,
And they wonder I hadn’t the notion
Of taking the vows.
’Tis a beautiful life and a quiet
And keeps you from going below,
As a girl I thought I might try it,
But, ach, I dunno!
Laughing off the song, the light-spirited, zaftig colleen thus began her first day as a postulant, on September 16, 1935, seeking admission into the Lough Glynn Convent, named for the lake it overlooked in Ireland’s County Roscommon.
Blessed with a joyful and jocular nature, the gregarious Molly quickly found herself bound by the religious house’s restraints of self-disciplined conventions and regulations, such as: custody of the eyes, soft voice, noiseless walking, controlled laughter.
For six months, she struggled as she labored, prayed, made countless mistakes and raised many a brow of the understanding and charitable Mothers of the convent, established in 1903 by the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary.
But Molly also had attributes that flourished in the community.
Born in 1907, baptized Mary but always called Molly, she had answered Christ’s call a bit late in life and found herself about 10 years older than most other postulants, who admired her common sense and wisdom. And as the eldest of 10 children, whom she had helped raise in the O’Sullivan clan from County Cork, she was reliable and dependable.
Because of her age and her elder-sister sensibilities, she stood out as the one to go to for advice and support when little crises arose. Even the Mothers recommended postulants go to her if they preferred not to speak to superiors.
So it was no miracle that she survived her probationary candidacy and advanced to novice, on March 19, 1936.
During the Clothing Ceremony, in addition to the new ivory serge religious habit, she also received the greatest symbol of her new life, a new name, one which she had requested: Eamonn, Irish for Edward, the name of her father, who had died the previous year. Officially, Mother Mary of Saint Eamonn, simply called Mother Eamonn.
The following day, she packed her few things in a valise and left for her novitiate at Les Châtelets sous Bois, in France.
Two years later, on March 19, 1938, the Feast of Saint Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, she professed her temporary vows for the congregation founded, in 1877, by Mother Marie de la Passion (Hélène Marie Philippine de Chappotin de Neuville, 1839-1904), born in Nantes, France.
“Will you take Jesus Christ, Son of God most High, as your spouse forever?” asked the presiding bishop.
“Yes, I will, and desire to do so with all my heart.”
“Will you keep the vows of chastity, obedience and poverty according to the constitutions of the Institute?”
“Yes, I will, with the help of God.”
“Will you follow unto death Jesus crucified, in imitating His most pure mother and your seraphic father Saint Francis, offering yourself as a victim for the Church and the salvation of souls?”
“Yes, I will, with the help of God.”
“Will you consecrate yourself forever to the missions of the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in accordance with holy obedience?”
“Yes, I will, with the help of God.”
Upon her finger she received a ring (symbol of betrothal to Christ as His spouse in chastity and fidelity) and upon her head a veil (symbol of consecration to the service of God and His Church).
As the bishop placed upon her veil a crown of thorns (symbol of shared suffering), he recited, “Receive this crown which your celestial spouse offers you, that you may be worthy to participate in his passion on earth and his glory in heaven.”
Mother Eamonn then pronounced her three vows of chastity, obedience and poverty, followed with the singing of “Te Deum,” the Church’s solemn hymn of thanksgiving.
Not long after the final notes floated heavenward, she received her assignment: the Republic of China. And she accepted her mission as the will of God, even though she understood the potential dangers, knowing full well the horrific details about the martyrdom of seven consoeurs, beheaded in odium fidei decades earlier:
After the seven Franciscan Missionaries of Mary arrived in Imperial China, on May 4, 1899, they immediately established an orphanage, for about 200 girls, and opened a dispensary while waiting for the construction of a hospital, in Taiyuan, in the province of Shanhsi (old form of Shanxi).
Unfortunately, their arrival coincided with the rise of the Boxer Rebellion, an anti-Christian killing spree at the turn of the century.
“Kill the foreigners! Slaughter the followers of the foreign devils!” was the motto of the Boxers, practitioners of martial arts.
When violence seemed imminent, Hsien Yü (old form of Xian Yu, 1842-1901), the province’s new governor later nicknamed the Butcher of Shanhsi, invited the seven Sisters and 38 other missionaries to safety in Taiyuan, promising them protection from the Boxers.
Tricked and trapped, the believers in Christ of the Cross stood helpless as a screaming mob wielding swords stormed the refuge, on July 9, 1900, and brutally decapitated all Christians, including the missionary Sisters, later hailed as the Seven Martyrs of Shanhsi...