Veritas Est Libertas

2011-12-27T17:22:00.000-08:00

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Fr. W. Aedan McGrath
August 17, 1957
Sydney Town Hall, Australia

NOTE: The recording starts to fade around 00:48, but picks up again around 1:12.
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Theresa Marie Moreau edited and researched the Rev. Fr. William Aedan McGrath's memoirs “Perseverance Through Faith: A Priest's Prison Story,” which may be purchased from Amazon.com.

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Warrior Priest

Father McGrath and the Battle for the Soul of China

By Theresa Marie Moreau

First Published in The Remnant Newspaper, June 2007

A single ring from the doorbell echoed through the rectory on Rue Maresca, home to the Missionary Society of St. Columban priests quartered in Shanghai.

It was around 11 p.m., on the night of September 6, 1951.

With a big smile on his face, the Rev. Fr. Malachi Murphy answered the door, expecting friends from Soochow to be on the other side.

Instead, he found eleven police officers, all wearing white caps and drab green uniforms, standing dour-faced on the front steps. One pointed a sub-machine gun. His ten comrades brandished pistols.Stationed around the perimeter of the three-story rectory, dozens and dozens of soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army stood watch. Their job: to make certain no one escaped the rectory. Murphy alerted his superior, the Rev. Fr. Edward McElroy, who promptly greeted his unwelcome guests.

“We want the names of everyone here,” one of the officers demanded of McElroy, who methodically ran down the litany of resident priests, finally coming to the Rev. Fr. William Aedan McGrath.

“That’s the one we want,” an officer blurted. “He’s being arrested on suspicion.”

“On suspicion of what?” McElroy asked.

“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 Communist enemy McGrath (pronounced mc-GRAW), spiritual director of China’s Legion of Mary, a Roman Catholic laity-based organization founded in Dublin, Ireland, in 1921.

For two hours, the authorities searched McGrath’s room, with its bed, night stand, a book of Gospels and a copy of Thomas à Kempis’ “My Imitation of Christ.” They found nothing. McGrath had anticipated his arrest and had destroyed any evidence that may have incriminated any one. Nonetheless, the officers arrested the priest, pushed him into the hallway, sealed the door to his bedroom to limit access, then escorted him downstairs, where he kneeled before McElroy for absolution.

On his way out, McGrath happened to look at his watch. It was 1 a.m.

It’s now September 7, the vigil of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the foundation day of the Legion of Mary, he thought to himself, chuckling. The Communists have selected a good day, today.

For twenty-four years McGrath had lived in China, during a time when the fastest route to the Orient was a six-week-long, stomach-launching voyage aboard an ocean liner. In August 1930, the newly ordained, 24-year-old priest arrived at dock in Shanghai, more than 6,000 miles from his hometown of Dublin. But he didn’t stop there. From China’s international port city, he continued four more days and 700 miles westward on the Yangtze River, which washes across China’s waistline.

At last, he arrived at his destination: the Hanyang diocese, in the province of Hubei, explains McGrath in a series of talks on six audio cassettes, most recorded by the Rev. Fr. Francis Peffley, of the Arlington diocese. McGrath was born in Dublin on January 22, 1906 and died on Christmas Day 2000. Though time has deposited crackles and sputters on the tapes, McGrath’s Irish brogue is crisp, his humor quick and his passion unmistakable as he described his experiences in China.

McGrath landed in the Republic of China around the same time a smalltime thug in the burgeoning Chinese Communist Party began strong-arming his way to secular omnipotence by seizing control of a few ragtag armies that ate and pillaged its way only a hundred miles or so south of Hanyang, where McGrath lived.

Known as a bloodthirsty bandit, Tse-Tung Mao, (who would later be blamed for the deaths of 77 million Chinese) was backed with money and muscle from the Kremlin, the seat of political power in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Joseph Stalin, general secretary of the USSR’s Communist Party’s Central Committee, had plans for China and looked for someone to head a puppet regime there, wrote husband and wife Jung Chang and Jon Halliday in “Mao: The Unknown Story.”

Megalomaniac Mao looked like promising material.

Born on December 26, 1893, to a wealthy peasant family, Mao’s two-character given names, Tse-Tung, translate to “Shine on the East.” His mother, a Buddhist, performed a “baptism” upon her son, in a ritual during which an eight-foot-tall boulder “adopted” Mao, who was then given his baptismal name of Shisan-Yazi (Boy of Stone).

McGrath heard plenty about Mao and tried to stay out of his path. Around the time the missionary priest had finished his rookie year, he was called to his bishop’s office, where he learned of his first big assignment.

“You’re to be a parish priest. I’m sorry to say there is no church there. I’m even more sorry to say there is no house. I don’t know what you’ll do, or where you’ll live, but do your best,” said the Most Rev. Edward Galvin, who co-founded with the Rev. Fr. John Blowick the St. Columban missionary society in 1918.

Off McGrath went, 100 miles north, where he stayed for the next sixteen years. He had twenty-four mission villages to cover. Without a car or even roads, he walked one day’s journey from one village to the next, where he bunked down for a few days with parishioners in their mud-and-straw huts. It took two months to cover his parish, where he baptized, instructed, heard confessions, buried the dead, blessed graves. Whatever needed to be done, McGrath did it. He had no choice. There was no one else.

After a few months and already completely emotionally exhausted, McGrath pleaded with Galvin to send him back-up. A priest. A nun. Anyone. Galvin told him there was no one. Desperate, McGrath tried Catholic Action, a lay apostolic movement Pope Pius XI had promoted. He undertook this task, and his endeavor, which he later referred to as “McGrath’s Folly,” almost took him under. After reprimanding a group of parishioners, they took revenge by writing nasty letters about him to all the bishops in China.

Again McGrath pleaded with his bishop for help. Unable to send a priest, the bishop sent a book, “The Official Handbook of the Legion of Mary,” put together almost entirely by Frank Duff, who had founded the Legion of Mary on September 7, 1921.

Still stinging from his failed attempt with Catholic Action, the last thing McGrath wanted to do was try to coax parishioners to help him out. Nonetheless, he decided he’d give it a go, half-expecting and half-hoping it would fail – just to spite the bishop. For his first group, McGrath rounded up six uneducated peasants. For six months, he absolutely forbade the men to tell their wives about the meetings, which were held, in secret, once a week at midnight. This way, McGrath reasoned, no one would know when it failed. If word got out about a second failure, that would be just too much.

Long after the village dogs had stopped barking and everyone in the village (except the six men and McGrath) had fallen asleep, the first meeting began with all seven kneeling and praying five decades of the rosary. McGrath followed the handbook and assigned to each of the men evangelization tasks that he had no time to do. The following week, villagers were still in the street at midnight, so McGrath – on the QT – ordered his six recruits to return in two hours. So at 2 a.m., the second meeting began. It had been a success. His apostles had accomplished all their tasks.

That was McGrath’s introduction to the Legion of Mary. Formally, he joined the Legion by making his act of consecration to Christ through Mary, as suggested by St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort (1673-1716) in his book “True Devotion to Mary,” in which he explains that the best way to get to Christ is the way He came to the world – through His mother.

Before McGrath knew it, his Legion grew and grew, but China was in utter turmoil, being ripped apart by the Chinese Communists and Nationalists, as well as thousands of Japanese invaders.

Mao aimed the crosshairs of his site on his target, political enemy Kai-Shek Chiang, known as the “Generalissimo,” who headed the Nationalist (Kuomintang) Party, formed by a number of Republican groups (and Communists) several tumultuous years after the Republican Revolution of 1911 that ended 2,000 years of China’s dynastic rule.

In 1927, the Nationalists had split with its Communist contingent because of the Communist’s (especially Mao’s) incitement and sadistic fondness of mob violence, inspired by Karl Marx’s idealized class struggle about which he wrote in “The Communist Manifesto,” published in 1848.

The Japanese, by 1931, had invaded Manchuria, a region in northeast China. The invaders wanted to get their hands on China’s natural resources of coal, iron, gold and giant forests. When thousands of Japanese soldiers marched into the village where McGrath lived, they gave him boot. He was forced to leave his parish and return to Hanyang around 1938.

That’s the end of the diocese, he thought. For without me, it’s bound to fail.

After two and a half years, McGrath was permitted to return. And what he found in his diocese greatly surprised him and, perhaps, hurt his ego a little. Not only had the diocese survived without him, it flourished. The legionaries had done everything – baptized, instructed, witnessed marriages, everything except offer Mass and hear confessions.

McGrath’s diocese wasn’t the only thing that flourished in China.

So had Mao’s power. Since January 1, 1937, Mao had holed up in Yenan, an ancient city enclosed by thick walls. Beginning in 1942, Mao began his “Rectification Campaign,” the “Yenan Terror,” Chang and Halliday wrote, describing how Mao ordered thousands of his young Chinese People’s Volunteers thrown into prison caves carved into the loess mountains of Yenan. There, his victims would be “spy-proofed,” during which they endured endless interrogations, brainwashing sessions, thought examinations, physical torture, even death. Mao pursued his perverse pleasure of breaking and bending people, to have everyone under his control.

Despite Mao, the Chinese felt optimistic when, on August 15, 1945, Victory Over Japan (V-J) Day, the Japanese surrendered, thus ending World War II and the occupation. But it wasn’t quiet for long. An all-out civil war between Mao’s Communists and Chiang’s Nationalists ensued.

With atheist Mao winning most of the battles, the future didn’t look so cozy for Catholics.

Archbishop Antonio Riberi, papal internuncio to China from 1946 to 1951, realized that all foreign clergy, nuns and religious would be kicked out of China, and that the Chinese clergy, nuns and religious would be thrown into prison. Riberi knew something had to be done. And fast. In Africa, he had witnessed the evangelization power of the Legion of Mary, so he asked around and found out that only McGrath, in all of China, had started up a Legion of Mary.

In 1948, McGrath was enjoying some R&R back home in Ireland when he received a message from his superior general: “Archbishop Riberi, the nuncio from the Pope, has arrived in China and is looking for the Legion of Mary. He asked that you be taken out of your parish to help him establish the Legion in China.”

Not wasting a second, McGrath cut short his stay and returned, post haste, to Shanghai.

At their meeting, Riberi told McGrath, “Father, I want you, as fast as you can, to go all over China and start the Legion of Mary before it’s too late.”

“Archbishop, do you not think it’s too late? Mao will be in power in a few months,” McGrath answered.

“Do what you’re told,” Riberi ordered.

McGrath embraced his mission. Soon the number of Legions throughout China doubled, then tripled and continued to rapidly multiply. Legionaries, realizing just what was at stake with Mao and his regime riffraff, played an important part in disseminating to Catholics the truth behind the Communist disinformation propaganda.

Around this time, the revolutionary Reds had advanced into northern China, where they were finally able to link up with the USSR, their chief supplier of weapons. It wasn’t long before Mao drove Chiang from mainland China to Taiwan (historically known as Formosa). On October 1, 1949, the Chairman stood in Tiananmen Square and announced the founding of the People’s Republic of China – with himself the head of the beast.

Forever updating his enemies list, Mao readied for the purge of anyone not having correct revolutionary thought. Being patriotic in China means being a revolutionary. Having learned in Yenan the best tactics to collect valuable incriminating information, Mao dispatched his minions to begin collecting data on a grand scale across China, to weed out “counterrevolutionaries,” such as those faithful to the Pope, Christ’s Vicar.

In an attempt to break with the Holy See, the xenophobic Communists established, in 1949, the Three-Self Reform Movement, so-called for its aim to be Self-governing, Self-supporting and Self-propagating. Relations between the Vatican and China first froze then officially broke in 1951 after Mao kicked out Riberi.

But Mao discovered the “official church” wasn’t catching on. There was an underground Roman Catholic Church that was still alive, thriving. Furious, he dispatched spies to find the culprit, which was none other than the Legion of Mary, with McGrath its spiritual director.

This did not sit well with the Red regime. Mao had no choice. He kick started and revved up the propaganda machine to start attacking the Legion, labeling it none other than Public Enemy No. 1.

Special registration centers were opened. Outside the doors, 6-foot-tall signs posted: SECRET SUBVERSIVE ORGANIZATION, LEGION OF MARY, MEMBER REGISTRATION CENTER. Inside, Legionaries were to sign the following: “I, the undersigned, joined the reactionary Legion of Mary on (date) and conducted secret counterrevolutionary and evil activities against the government, the people, and Soviet Russia. I hereby resign from the Legion of Mary and promise never to participate in such activities in the future.”

Very few registered.

As part of the anti-Legionary, anti-Catholic campaign, loudspeakers nailed onto the trees seemingly everywhere blasted the Legion, as did segments on the radio, stories in the newspapers, posters on the buses, which encouraged one and all to attack the Legion and inform against the Legionaries.

Purges began.

Back in Shanghai, McGrath watched as police cars shrieked up and down the streets. People disappeared from their homes in the middle of the night, never to return. One of the priests in the city used to call himself the Chaplain to the Dying. He stood at his window. When police cars filled with people passed, he granted them absolution, just in case they were Catholics. The cars always returned empty.

From 1950 to 1951 McGrath waited to be arrested, terrified, spending a good deal of time on his knees in the chapel, going around the Stations of the Cross, trying to get courage from the Passion of Christ. At the twelfth station, when Christ is raised on the cross and dies, at first McGrath recited a common prayer: “May I die for love of thee, as thou hast died for love of me?”

Terrified, his knees shook so bad at the thought of death he stopped saying that prayer. Instead, he opted for Christ’s prayer (Luke 22:42) in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Father, if thou wilt, remove this chalice from me: but yet not my will, but thine be done.”

Finally, they came for him.

The night McGrath was arrested, he was taken to a detention center, where he stayed for several months, until he was moved to Ward Road Prison, reportedly one of the largest prisons in the world, built smack dab in the industrial area of Shanghai. Enclosed by a security wall 5 meters (16.4 feet) high, the ten cell blocks sat on 60 mus, roughly equivalent to 10 acres. Built in 1901, it opened its doors in 1903. On May 28, 1949, it was taken over by the Military Control Committee of Shanghai and renamed the Shanghai People’s Court Prison, then renamed Shanghai Municipal Prison in 1951 (when it held 12,000 prisoners), then renamed Tilanqiao Prison in 1995.

A dozen soldiers, two with sub-machine guns aimed at McGrath, forced him to strip then searched him and his clothing for anything he could use to kill himself. They took his watch, rosary beads and religious medals. They removed the laces from his shoes, the buttons off his trousers and forced him to stand, naked, for hours. But they never removed his extra-large brown scapular of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel hanging around his neck. McGrath took it as a sign.

The Blessed Mother is trying to tell me to stop worrying, he thought.

At 3 in the morning, guards ordered him to lie down on a bit of straw scattered on the cement floor. Even with a sub-machine gun trained on him, he fell asleep. At 5 a.m., McGrath was kicked awake, ordered to get dressed then hauled to his cell.

On his second day in prison, again the guards strip searched McGrath. Again, they seemingly missed his Our Lady of Mt. Carmel scapular.

Thank goodness. Mother is doing something. She’s giving me a sign. I’ve consecrated myself to her, and here is a sign: Quit worrying, thought McGrath. It wasn’t until three months later, with strip searches nearly every day, that the guards finally saw the scapular and ripped it from his neck.

On the third day of his arrest, McGrath was dragged out of his cell to an interrogation room, where he was forced to stand still for hours, as guards changed every sixty minutes. He was returned to his cell for a few minutes sleep, kicked awake again then dragged to the interrogation room, where he was forced to stand – handcuffed – from midnight until 3 a.m., answering questions. All he wanted to do was sleep.

One of the interrogators began to sneer at him.

“Ireland. Ha! We’ll be in Ireland to liberate you.”

Well, that woke McGrath up. “Thank you very much; we are liberated.”

“We’ll liberate you more,” said the interrogator, who walked over to McGrath, unscrewed the handcuffs and sent him downstairs to his cell to think about his “crimes.”

For McGrath’s thirty-two months behind bars, he thought of what that interrogator had said.

For thirty-two months, McGrath listened to men, women, young girls and boys dragged out of their cells, day and night, handcuffed, with shackles binding their legs, clinking as they shuffled along toward “liberation.”

Everyone around McGrath went mad.

A priest in a cell opposite McGrath vomited for two months, then was dragged out of his cell and died on November 11, 1951. McGrath heard later that the priest was the Rev. Fr. Cheng-Min “Beda” Chang, of the Society of Jesus.

To McGrath’s right, a boy cried and sobbed at night, talking to himself, shaking the bars, calling for his father, his mother, his brothers and sisters. After one month, it was all over. For the next five months, the boy shrieked his head off.

At first, McGrath thought it was going to shake him completely. He felt a fright creep into him. Then he remembered his act of consecration to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and vowed he would never be uneasy about anything – past or future. McGrath sat down. A calm overcame the fear, and he went to sleep.

In the morning, when the whistle blew, he saw the rays of the sun shine through the windows above the fifth floor. He stood up, kissed the bars and prayed Galatians 6:14: “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.”

That became his morning offering, every morning.

Years later, while in Rome in 1980, McGrath was invited by Pope John Paul II to celebrate the Mass with him at the altar. After saying his post-Mass thanksgiving, the Pope met with McGrath. The Pontiff heard the parish priest had suffered in a Chinese prison for the faith.

“Father, what kept you sane in prison?”

“Holy Father, I have no doubt in the world. It was de Montfort’s “True Devotion to Mary.”

At this the Pope laughed and asked, “Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what kept me sane in Poland, when I was a student running from one house to another studying philosophy and theology?” the Pope asked pulling his sweat-stained copy of “True Devotion to Mary” out from under his cassock. “I found this little book on a table. It’s been in my pocket ever since, and I read a chapter every day.”

On April 9, 1952, McGrath was transferred to Ward Road Prison, where he received a piece of bamboo with his identification number: 2146. In his cell, there was no bed. No table. No chair. No window. The only light came from dim bulbs along the long corridor. No water. No toilet. Only a bucket – for waste elimination. So small was the cell that McGrath couldn’t stretch his arms out to the side without having to bend his fingers, and when he laid down, his 5-foot-3-inch frame fit, perfectly. Not another inch.

Twice a day, inmates received a minimum portion of brown rice, the kind usually used to feed livestock, slopped into filthy square tins, just wide enough to fit between the iron bars. The first at 9 a.m.; the second at 3 p.m. A single cup of hot water after each meal. They were not allowed to drink cold water.

His cellmates? Bedbugs. Thousands and thousands of bedbugs. McGrath would wake up in the middle of the night, and the bugs would be crawling all over his body, sucking his blood. In the mornings, he woke with tiny festering bubbles on his skin. McGrath considered it a bit unfair that he had bedbugs, but no bed.

In prison, McGrath was peaceful, yes, but not comfortable.

Having to endure endless interrogations during the night, it was next to impossible to keep his eyes open during the day. And all prisoners were never allowed to close their eyes for rest during the daytime. Sleep deprivation was a mental and physical torture used to soften up inmates for interrogations. McGrath was constantly caught and endlessly punished for dozing off in his cell. At times, guards bound his hands behind his back with French handcuffs, tightening the links. In the winter, he would be stripped naked and forced to stand in the freezing air for thirty minutes.

Birds sometimes entered the cell block through the upper-story windows opened to ventilate the human stench. One day McGrath noticed a sparrow hopping in front of his door of iron bars. When his next tin of rice came, he tucked a few grains in a crevice. Before too long, he heard a whistle and flicked the rice toward the bird, who ate so much McGrath thought he’d burst.

The sparrow became a regular mealtime mooch. One day McGrath noticed the bird whistled and flew away, then ten seconds later the guard appeared. With its acute hearing, the bird heard the key in the door, which caused him to take off.

McGrath was in luck. The sparrow signaled when the guard was coming, so he would have enough time to sit up, rub his eyes and keep them wide open, so as not to be caught with his eyes closed. When the sparrow reappeared and whistled, McGrath knew the guard was gone.

That sparrow stayed with McGrath during the rest of his imprisonment. Even when the guards opened the priest’s cell, made him pack up his bits of clothing and raggedy blanket, put a sack over his head, open the gate, lead him out and take him to another cell, whether another floor or another building altogether, within five minutes, McGrath heard a whistle. His loyal companion was there.

Inmates were also not allowed to talk, cough or sneeze, which guards claimed were ways of inner-prison communication. Everyone was to sit on the floor, all day everyday, and do nothing but think of their “crimes.”

One day a guard snapped at McGrath, “What are you doing?”

“I’m thinking about God,” McGrath answered.

“You’re not allowed to think about God.”

Nonetheless, McGrath settled into a very busy daily routine – mostly thinking about God.

As a seminarian he was trained never to waste time, to prepare his day, because if he let his mind wander, he would do and accomplish nothing. Therefore, while in prison, he mentally wrote out a schedule so that from 6 a.m., when the morning whistle blew, until 9 p.m., when the night whistle blew, he would be busy.

Upon waking, he kissed the bars and repeated his morning prayer, then went through the prayers of the Latin Mass, which he had remembered by rote. This was followed with a one-hour spiritual communion, then a spiritual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, complete with divine praises and Latin hymns.

Three rosaries before noon. Three after noon. Twice a day, he made a particular examination of conscience, in which he thought about his predominant passion that caused him the most trouble, counted how many times he failed and resolved to do better. McGrath’s predominant passion in prison? He was never to think of yesterday, never to think of tomorrow.

He would go through the Stations of the Cross.

Then two hours of study. What? He had nothing to study. Except one thing. He was permitted a toothbrush and toothpaste, which on the back stated in exact terms the number of germs that were killed per second by that particular toothpaste. So, everyday, that was his “spiritual” reading, to keep his mind busy.

For mental prayer and meditations, he went through each question and answer, one by one, in the “Baltimore Catechism,” which he knew by heart. Each Q & A opened up a vista of theology for him. He also composed sermons – in English, then translated them into French, Latin and Chinese.

In other words, he kept himself busy.

One day, McGrath received a postage stamp. Prisoners were able to secretly pass items to one another through various ways. When McGrath flipped over the stamp, he could see very, very small beautiful writing in pencil. It was from Wolf Gruen, a German Jew, an engineer thrown into prison on bogus charges of espionage.

“Dear Father, I would like to know something about the Catholic Church.”

McGrath wanted to begin instructing Gruen, but he had no paper, no pencil. Walter, a White Russian crook treated decently by the Communists because they considered him a “comrade,” had been given an inmate job of rolling the food cart from cell to cell, distributing the tins of rice during mealtimes. One day, he noticed McGrath’s little piece of Foxford rug. The yellow colors caught his eye.

“Would you give me that?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I need it myself.”

“Do you want me to do anything for you? There’s a priest friend of yours down the row.”

“I can’t write him anything. I have no pencil. I have no paper.”

“I’ll get you some.”

So Walter the White Russian got his hands on little bits of rough, brown toilet paper and snuck it to McGrath, who used it to reply to Gruen and instructed him the best he could under the circumstances. Eventually Gruen left the prison before McGrath.

“Have you any message for your people?” Gruen wrote in a final note.

“Just tell them that I’m here, and that I’m OK.”

Gruen went to Hong Kong and gave the message to a priest, who baptized McGrath’s catechumen.

After two years and eight months, guards entered McGrath’s cell and dragged him out. He had just finished making his third novena to St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, author of “True Devotion to Mary.”

“You are going to be executed,” guards taunted him.

McGrath was brought before a tribunal. He had never once seen a lawyer the entire thirty-two months he spent in Ward Road Prison.

“Do not talk,” they warned, then read out his “crimes” of “disrupting the youth of China.” Nonetheless, they ordered his release, adding a final caution: “Leave this country and never come back.”

Later, two guards armed with sub-machine guns escorted McGrath and the Rev. Fr. Francis Xavier Legrand, of the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Scheut, out of the prison and onto a train. Legrand had been arrested the same night as McGrath.

On the train ride, Legrand broke down.

“My God, I don’t know what happened to me,” Legrand confessed, with tears running down his cheeks. “At one period, I was standing for six days and six nights. They never let me move my feet.”

“My God, how could you do that? Did you not fall?” McGrath asked him.

“I was shackled, and I was handcuffed. I tried to fall. I longed to faint. I couldn’t, and every few hours, the judges would come in and they’d say, ‘You killed two men.’ And the guards would change every hour, and I went on standing. I remember it quite clearly, and then I didn’t know what was day and what was night, and at the end of six days and six nights, they came in and I remember it, but I don’t know what happened. I asked for paper, and I wrote that I killed two men.”

After the fifty-hour train ride, McGrath and Legrand, escorted by Communists, arrived in Canton, then in Hong Kong, where the two priests were handed over to the British police.

But before the train ride from Shanghai to Hong Kong, before Legrand’s tearful confession, before McGrath left Ward Road Prison, he shuffled, in chains, from the make-shift courtroom to his final holding cell.

It would be his last day of imprisonment and his first of freedom. “What’s the date today?” McGrath asked someone nearby.

“April 28, 1954,” was the reply.

April 28, the unofficial feast day of St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort.

ENDNOTE: All Chinese names have been written in a manner to avoid confusion and to remain consistent with the English standard of writing proper names: given name first, family name last. In Chinese, names are traditionally written with family name first, followed by given names, usually consisting of two characters.

Theresa Marie Moreau may be reached at TMMoreau@yahoo.com.

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Recollections of September 8, 1955

2011-04-25T16:38:00.001-07:00

Recollections
............of September 8, 1955

by the Rev. Fr. Xavier Cai, SJ

Although it was 40 years ago, Shanghai Catholics all over the world will not forget our vivid memories and trauma on the eve of September 8, 1955. Indeed, I did my annual St. Ignatius’ spiritual exercises during the preceding five years anticipating my own cross the Lord had prepared for me. The cross represents suffering, and the day we accept our own cross when it is given to us is a day of grace and glory. Glory to God, indeed!

On the evening of September 8, 1955, the Chinese Communists made up their mind to destroy the Catholic Church in Shanghai and started a large-scale attack on the Church. Our beloved then-Bishop Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei and priests in the diocesan office were all arrested. Many other rectors, priests and seminarians were also put under arrest. Parish pastors and priests simply disappeared. Residences of the religious orders, including Salesians, Daughters of Charity and Carmelites, were all searched and properties were confiscated; their rectors and mother superiors were all arrested. In the short time from September 8 to September 26, inside the Shanghai city proper, there were more than 40 priests, 30 seminarians, 20 Sisters and 1,000-plus lay people, including college youth, arrested. Instantly, all prisons and detention centers in Shanghai were overflowing with Catholics.

The September 8 incident was just the beginning of a long series of persecutions that started in Shanghai and soon spread all over China in a short time. Day after day, year after year, this long and agonizing journey of soul searching continued. For our Lord, Church and faith, the stories of many martyrs wrote a painful-yet-memorable chapter of Chinese Church history.

On that heartbreaking evening, many parents had to see their innocent children go and many husbands had to get ready to visit their spouses in prison. Some of the parents were not Catholic, and they simply could not understand why their children were arrested. Some even begged their children to leave “this damn Church,” and refusal by their children only added to the agony that they already had to endure. Even for the Catholic families, the separation of husbands and wives, children and parents was still heartbreaking. Some young toddlers would not let their mothers go; for their belief, their mothers painfully pushed away their own children and got on their journey. For me, it was all darkness and uncertainty inside myself. We did not know where the journey would lead us, how we would be treated. We would be in prisons and would be interrogated a thousand times, and possibly sent to exile for labor reform. I am still surprised that I had the courage, with my eyes closed, to say, “Our Father, whatever you want me to have, I will take it.” To my disbelief, we were like Jesus ready to accept the sorrowful cup, but we did not know what kind of sorrow was in the cup.

Going to jail was the beginning of our suffering. Patrick Henry, one of the Founding Fathers of America, once said, “Give me liberty or give me death.” The most painful thing that can happen to us is to lose hope, to lose control of our own destiny. For some young students, this meant that they could not continue schooling for the rest of their lives; all doors to professional and scientific training were shut. They could only be farmers and factory workers. Imprisonment deprived them of everything. They were not treated as human beings in the prisons. They could not dream of finding an agreeable spouse and raising an ideal family. Ten years, 20 years, years of hopelessness and desperation were difficult to endure. These youth constantly lost their sleep at night. This amazing group of youths shouldered their cross because of their love for Jesus! Only with that, could they persist and persevere through the ordeal.

For the young women, their marriage and future families were everything to them. Being in prison did not just mean the loss of freedom, but the hope of starting a family of their choice. There is no young girl who does not want to find her own prince, who can care, love and comfort her. Even this aspiration was not possible. Yes, if they would “wake up,” i.e., turn their back to their faith, they could be out of prison in no time and pursue their future. Some did just that and later became core members of the puppet church, the so-called “Patriotic Church.” Nevertheless, many chose to stay on course in their journey of faith. Recalling that today still terrifies me in that difficult spiritual struggle they had to go through. I wonder, and they wondered also, where they derived the willpower and strength to stay in the detention centers, prisons and labor camps. Many faithful young women had a vocation to stay celibate and to become a religious. They Church teaching then taught a sister maintaining her virginity and celibacy is the spiritual bride of Christ. They had never thought about marriage, not even to Catholics. But, being locked up and being in isolation and solitary confinement, the need to survive forced some of them to marry labor-camp cadres and workers. There was this dubious honor at that time that male labor-camp cadres and workers preferred to marry Catholics, members of the Legion of Mary would be even better and ideal. Our Catholic youth women had such a reputation in their modest and graceful manner and carriage.

One of the many remarkable women I knew went through 20 years-plus of labor-camp rehabilitation and still stayed single. She did not return to her hometown of Shanghai; instead, she joined the order of Theresian Association, which was still active in the northern part of China. When I left China, she was the spiritual director for many young novices. As young as 15, she was already a Confraternity of Catholic Doctrine teacher for youngsters in the Church in Zikawei. She was arrested two days after I was taken by the police in 1953. she was one of the most able in the youth group and was watched closely and arrested quite early by the Bureau of Public Safety. She left her feeble mother and six young siblings. She was such a great example in my memory.

It is sad by that only we, the survivors, can do the remembering. In these 40 years, many priests died in prisons. For example: Fr. Tong Shi-Ze, Fr. Wu Ying-Fung, Fr. Wang Zen-Shen, Fr. Chen Tse-Ming, Fr. Shen Shi-Shen, Fr. Hour Zi-Tzeng, Fr. Chang Shen-Yu, Fr. Chu Shu-Te and Fr. Sheng Pei-Shun. There are many Brothers, Sisters and lay people who also died for their belief and faith. Fr. Wang Zen-Shen was special to me. The more I think of him, the deeper I feel his greatness. Recently, the Church canonized Fr. Maximilian Kolbe. This noble, Polish priest died of hunger in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Fr. Wang is a Chinese Kolbe. They both died of hunger because of their love for others in the camps. During those years of many natural disasters in the early 1960s, the living conditions were harsh and strict, and meager rationing was instituted in the labor camp. Many went through that and feel lucky to be alive today. Fr. Wang died of hunger at that time. I know this quite well. He could not stand to see those young inmates doing heavy work while craving for food. He saved and gave some of his meager, “starvation” rations to those young inmates. As hard times persisted, he found that it was hard to bear. In desperation, he wrote to his sister, asking for some food supply. When his sister finally had time to go to him, it was already too late. I witnessed Fr. Wang’s love and care for his brothers. Jesus told us, “There is no love greater than dying for your own brothers.”

There are many priests who were released from the prisons, yet died later for their faith. The list includes, Fr. Chang Si-Bin, Fr. Lee Chi-Tsai, Fr. Chin She-Yuan, Fr. Fu He-Chou, Fr. Shen Le-Tin, Fr. Lu Ta-Yuan, Fr. Yen Wun-Liang and Fr. Chu Hung-Sheng. Their courage and bravery was like that of Christ, himself, “Follow the order until death, and death on the cross.” Among them, Fr. Shen’s family was dear to my heart. Fr. Shen’s father died in prison, as well, for his faith. Fr. Shen’s mother suffered and endured so much after their house was confiscated. Fr. Shen’s sister, Li-Sha, was also an outstanding Catholic. She was sent to a labor camp in Qinghai province, and her virtue won so much admiration from Catholics, as well as non-Catholics. After her return to Shanghai, she was struck with cancer. She was homebound, and many visitors, including those acquaintances in Qinghai, were amazed to see her peacefulness and inner joy. That was exactly like her patroness, St. Therese of the Child Jesus. I visited her several times, and she was always devoted, caring and loving. She left the world with peace and a smile. I hope that someone will be able to write about her story.

Cardinal Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei was in my fond memory, as well. Forty years ago, Shanghai Catholics were so brave that “Blood can flow, yet our faith shall not waiver.” He was so proud of them, and he wrote and eight-word banner of Chinese characters for them: “Walk through shining blades. Dance into burning fires.”

It is quite emotional for me to recall that tragic September day 40 years ago. But, to write for and to compile this commemoration has a deeper meaning. It was a painful memory, all right, and the pain and suffering were hard to bear. Yet, as the Carmelite Sister Elizabeth once said, “Only on the cross can you find Jesus, and He shall give you life and peace.” Those who went through the persecutions can have a real appreciation of what she said. For these 40 years, we really encountered Christ, who was by our sides and who gave us comfort and peace. The Communist Party cadres and our close friends, to this day, are still puzzled to see our smile and our inner peace.

There were some lay people, priests and bishops who avoided their cross, and, under the direction of the Communist Party, they formed the so-called “Patriotic Chinese Catholic Church” in Beijing. In the first issue of the “Patriotic Chinese Catholic Church” magazine in 1958, I recall these flattering words by a bishop: “If there is no skin left, where will the hair find a place to root?” It meant that the Communist Party was the skin and we, the Catholic Church, were the hairs. The Catholic Church needed the Communist Party to survive. To this day, I still have goose bumps when thinking about it. I really don’t know whether there is any faith left in that bishop. It really hurts.

In the end, I like to go back to the side of the cross erected on Golgotha Hill. Only Jesus, who died on the cross, can say this: “Those who follow me will enter the kingdom of God, and those who betray me will vanish.” Indeed, those who followed Christ carrying their own crosses will enter the kingdom of God, and those who did not will vanish forever!

†

The Rev. Fr. Xavier Cai, SJ, was born on October 30, 1907. He joined the Society of Jesus on September 7, 1927, and was ordained a priest on May 30, 1940. For 35 years, the Communists persecuted him for his faith, as he suffered in Communist prisons and labor camps. He was finally set free in 1987, the same year he immigrated to the United States of America. He died in 1997.

Martyrs Photo Album

2010-12-01T07:36:00.000-08:00

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MARTYRS PHOTO ALBUM

DRY MARTYR: One who suffers and dies a thousand deaths for the Church in times of persecution, without shedding blood.

WET MARTYR: One who dies, sheds blood for the Church.

MISSING
The Most Rev. Zhi-Ming “Jacobus” Su, bishop of Baoding, kidnapped on October 8, 1997, by undercover police thugs with the Public Security Bureau. He has not been seen since. His whereabouts, unknown.
To read about Bishop Su, click here.

MISSING
The Rev. Gen-Jun “Joseph” Lu, acting bishop of Baoding following the abduction of Bishop Su, was kidnapped on February 17, 2006 by undercover thugs with the Public Security Bureau. He has not been seen since. His whereabouts, unknown.
To read about Fr. Lu, click here.

走近一位中国神父

The above is a photo of the funeral of The Most Rev. Xue-Yan "Peter Joseph" Fan, former bishop of Baoding.
Bishop Fan was arrested the first time in 1958 for refusing to join the Communist-led Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and his for refusal to renounce the authority of the Pope. Subsequently, he was sentenced to a death camp. He was released in 1969, but was re-arrested several more times in his life.
One night in November 1990, he was abducted by undercover thugs from the Public Security Bureau, and for 18 months no one knew where he was.
Then, one early morning in April 1992, the frozen and broken body of the 85-year-old bishop, wrapped in plastic, was dumped in front of the home of his family.
His body showed obvious signs of torture. His face and body bore wounds and scars. He was so emaciated, all his ribs could be counted. The bones in legs had been obviously fractured.

Benedictine Brother Peter (Bang-Jiu Zhou) lived in a Benedictine monastery in Szechwan, China, when the Communists took over China. After which, he was arrested for refusing to renounce the Pope, and subsequently, he suffered 25 years in a Communist prison, where he was tortured for many of those years.
To read about Brother Peter, click here.

To read about Joseph and Catherine Ho's almost unbelievable Catholic love story in Communist China, click here.

勞改營中天主兒女的「愛情故事」

To read how a Catholic seminarian was arrested on September 8, 1955, the same night as Bishop Pin-Mei Kung, and spent the next 29 years in prisons and death camps, click here.

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Trappist Monks in Communist China

2010-10-06T15:00:00.000-07:00

Enemies of the State:

Catholic Priests
.....in Communist China

by Theresa Marie Moreau

First published in The Remnant Newspaper, April, May, June 2011

Eritis mihi testes. (You shall be my witnesses.)

– Acts of the Apostles 1:8

Distant gunfire in the dead of night startled the Trappist monks from their slumber. Inside the darkened monastery, they listened as Chinese Communist soldiers viciously attacked a city only a few miles to the north.

Suddenly, the far-off explosions drew nearer. Red soldiers running from the city of Chengtingfu headed south, straight for Our Lady of Joy, the Trappist monastery situated on a 300-acre alluvial island that parted the waters of Hutuo River.

The moon, nearly full that April 4, 1947, highlighted the soldiers in an eerie chiaroscuro of gray, as they bolted toward the North Bridge, the railroad trestle that crossed the north strand of the river. Continuing southward along the railroad tracks that paralleled the monastery’s enclosure wall, the Red guerilla warriors raised their weapons and aimed toward the cloister. Explosions from the barrels sent bullets flying. Dirt puffed up gray dust clouds. Craters dimpled mud brick walls. A single shot entered the shoulder of Father Benedictus-Josephus Labre Chao, but exited through the other, without even nicking a bone. The Communist combatants continued along the tracks, crossed the South Bridge and headed toward the city of Shihchiachuang, several miles to the south. And just as suddenly as they had appeared, they disappeared.

Madness passed. Calmness returned. In the quiet of the early morning, at 3:30 a.m., the assigned monk rang the bell to signal the hour for Matins. Alerted by the clanging, the guerilla soldiers – dressed in civilian clothing – returned to the island, clambered over the enclosure wall and swarmed the monastery. They thought the bell had been a signal to their enemy in the Chinese Civil War.

“Where are the Nationalists?” demanded the soldiers, as they grabbed a few of the closest monks, roughing them up.

“I don’t know,” the monks answered. It was the truth. It was also the safest answer.

Again, the irregular troops left just as suddenly.

Following the attack on their Community, the monks held a meeting to discuss its future. Stay or evacuate were the two options that Father Prior Paulinus Li offered each one. He forced no one to stay. He forced no one to leave. For some of the 60-or-so monks, it seemed impossible to stay. For others, it seemed impossible to leave. But, leave? To where? Prior Paulinus thought of Bishop Jacques-Victor-Marius Rouchouse (Society of Foreign Missions of Paris).

Decades earlier, in 1921, when Our Lady of Joy was just a mustard seed of an idea sprouting in the meditations of Father Abbot Louis Brun – the spiritual and temporal head of Our Lady of Consolation – Bishop Rouchouse had made the grueling trip, all 1,094 miles from Szechwan province to the Trappist abbey in the mountains of Chahar province. The bishop planned to convince the monks to build their monastery in his diocese of Chengtu. He had already prepared the house and the land. In return, all he asked for was 12 choir religious and 12 lay brothers.

But it was not meant to be. Abbot Louis decided that Szechwan was just too far away to keep tabs on an infant daughterhouse. Somewhere closer, he preferred. So, in 1926, when Dutch Bishop Franciscus Hubertus Schraven (Congregation of the Mission) offered an alluvial island in the province of Hopei, for the new Trappist foundation, it was readily accepted.

More than two decades later, not knowing if Bishop Rouchouse were even still alive, Prior Paulinus sat down with his brush and ink, and with grand strokes, drew up a letter.

Bishop Rouchouse quickly wrote back with his response: “I welcome you to my diocese. The house, prepared 26 years ago, is still there kept for you, as well as the land, about 200 acres. Everything is ready for your accommodation.”

An advance team of two monks – Father Jean-Marie Struyven and Father Victor Chu – left Our Lady of Joy, on June 24, 1947, to prepare the refugee monastery for the others. First stop: Shanghai, where they lingered for an extended stay that lasted into July. While there, a story in a newspaper caught Father Victor’s eye: “Our Lady of Consolation has been destroyed, and the monks are prisoners.”

Shocked to read about the devastation of their motherhouse and the imprisonment of its Community of monks, Father Victor immediately wrote to Prior Paulinus, with a warning: Evacuate all as soon as possible.

But soon as possible was not soon enough.

Again, distant gunfire in the dead of night startled the Trappist monks from their slumber. Inside the darkened monastery on the alluvial island, they listened as Chinese Communist soldiers again viciously attacked Chengtingfu, only a few miles to the north. The soldiers stormed the city during the night of August 24, 1947, and by morning they had complete control.

After Chengtingfu – the Catholic heart of northern China – the soldiers headed toward the monastery. But even before the troops had stormed onto the wooden railroad ties of the North Bridge, around 40 monks had already fled Our Lady of Joy, on foot, heading for the nearby city of Shihchiachuang. Of the 20 left behind, most sought refuge at the Chengtingfu Diocesan Center, while the eldest preferred to remain at home – to live or die – cloistered under the protection of the mantle Our Lady of Joy. They included Brother Andreas Chang, Father Augustinus Meng (appointed superior of the splinter group), Father Edmond Pallager, Brother Hilarius Shen, blood brothers Brother Stephanus Tian and Father Timotheus Tian, Brother Andreas Wong, Brother Silvester Wong and Father Mattheus Yin.

With only the habits on their backs, the 40 refugees had grabbed their straw mats, quilts, some white-feathered leghorn chickens, and wrangled eight of their finest Holsteins out of their stalls and onto the dirt road, heading south. The black-and-white bovines were descendants of the original 15 received as a dowry from their motherhouse when Our Lady of Joy had opened on April 29, 1928, the feast day of St. Robert of Molesme, the monk who had splintered off from the Benedictines of the French Molesme Abbey, in 1098, and founded Our Lady of Cîteaux, the grande dame abbey of the Trappist Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance.

But still, for the refugees, Shihchiachuang was only a stopping point. They, along with their furred and feathered traveling companions, needed to evacuate the area and head to Peking, thought to be well protected at that time by the military of the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang). Travel by train, impossible. Even though Shihchiachuang had long been the railroad hub of northern China – where east met west, and south met north – rail lines kept up by the Nationalists had been either dynamited or stolen by the Communists. The only way out was by plane. On September 15, 1947, with assistance from retired Lt. Gen. Claire Lee Chennault – the former creator and commander of the 1^st American Volunteer Group (Flying Tigers) of the Republic of China Air Force. Chennault’s civilian company, the Civil Air Transport, flew the refugees out of Shihchiachuang for the one-hour flight to the ancient city.

Once in Peking, Father Prior Sylvester Healy (Order of St. Benedict) welcomed the Trappist refugees into the order’s provincial house, at 13 Yu Huang Ko. He even welcomed the animals, permitting them to graze and peck freely in the spacious backyard during the day. At night, with the leghorns in their nests and the cows safely stalled in a few tents erected for their comfort, the monks headed for the workmen’s quarters, where they unrolled their straw mats upon the brick floors, shook the dust from their quilts and stretched out for a few hours sleep. At 3:15 a.m., they wakened to sing Matins, the night Canonical Office.

Monks and Holsteins in backyard

But it was a short stay in Peking. Along with Father Vincentius Shi – their compassionate sub-prior – most of the Community headed for their new monastery in Szechwan province. Without passage for their Holsteins, the beasts remained behind, along with a couple monks, Father Simon Chang and Brother Stanislaus Jen, as their cowherds.

Once aboard train, they left Peking, on September 25, 1947, and headed straight for Tientsin, where they stayed in the Marist Brothers secondary school house for two days, waiting for their ship to accept passengers. School principal, Brother Marcus Chang, who had also been a teacher at Our Lady of Consolation’s Peikou, welcomed them. From Tientsin, the monks climbed onto a stake-bed truck for the 30 mile ride to the port city of Tang-Koo.

With their few worldly possessions, the monks boarded, on September 27, 1947, the Li-Kong, a cargo ship loaded with oversized baskets stuffed with the white-stalked, green-leafed Chinese cabbage. For four days, the Trappists remained on deck alongside the baskets, which they used as giant pillows, to either lean against or sleep atop. The weather, beautiful, with a warm breeze and blue sky in the day. At night, the constellations of Little Bear and Great Bear sauntered overhead, watching as the ship’s hull splashed through the Bohai Gulf, into the Yellow Sea, with its bowsprit pointed straight to Shanghai, sin city of the Orient.

Once ashore, on October 1, 1947, in that international port city, with its French and English settlements, the monks met up with two of their confreres who had fled Our Lady of Joy when the Communists had first swarmed the monastery the previous April. Father Yves You had been staying with his family and decided to rejoin his Community to continue on with them to Szechwan. However, Father Laurentius Gérardin, who had been staying in the Jesuit house with his brother Father André Gérardin (Society of Jesus), chose to return to his homeland of France.

In a matter of days, the refugees boarded the Ming-Lien, which pushed off October 7, 1947, for Szechwan province, the Rich Kingdom of Heaven. Ying-Keng Lu, a wealthy Shanghainese Catholic who was a high-ranking executive in a shipping company, had purchased the tickets for all the monks. For two weeks, the ship floated down the Yangtze River, the Long River that girdles China. The monks passed by the fast-paced port cities and marveled at the sky-high gorges they slipped through before docking in Chungking, on October 18, 1947. For two days they stayed in the city of Double Celebration, then climbed aboard two rented transport trucks that chugged and gasped up the mountains all the way to Szechwan’s capital city of Chengtu, where Bishop Rouchouse welcomed them to his diocese, finally.

After a few days with the bishop, the Community continued its final, 12-mile leg of the journey, and arrived, on October 25, 1947, at their Mandarin-style home, with its two side gates and two small bridges, that stretched forward as two open arms. Their monastery was called Nipato, because it was built on the bank of the Nipa River. In the fertile valley of their district of Singtu, the monks were surrounded by hillsides of green that sprouted from every nook, cranny and crack of red earth, even in winter. In spring, the air filled with the aroma of the yellow, flower blossoms perched on top of the gangly colza plants. And in summer, skies filled with gray clouds, lumpy and thick, like a steaming pot of breakfast congee.

But as the refugee monks of Our Lady of Joy had traveled from Peking to their new home in Szechwan, unbeknownst to them, five monks of Our Lady of Consolation, who had been imprisoned by the Communists, had been released on October 13, 1947, from their prison cells in the village of Mu Chia Chwang, and were making their way out of the Mongolian mountains, heading toward Peking.

Father Raphael Lee, Brother Barnabas Liu, Brother Joachim Liu, Brother Cyprianus Yang and Brother Isidorus Ying had been taken captive in their own abbey, along with 69 other monks, in July 1947. In August, when the Communist leader Tui-Shih Li learned that Nationalist General Tso-Yi Fu was marching toward the abbey to save the religious Community, the handcuffed and shackled monks were forced – by whip and club – on a Death March along rough mountain trails.

Upon their release, immediately, the five headed for Peking. Through the mountains, the foothills, the waste of coal fields near Wang Ping they stumbled along, until a barrage of gunfire sprayed the ground around them, sending the men running behind a pile of coal for cover. Someone ordered them out. With arms overhead, the monks clambered over the chunks of coal, toward a Nationalist soldier. Suspicious, he looked over their paperwork given to them by the Communists, briefly interrogated them, then gave the order to proceed. At base camp, they underwent more questioning, until a Catholic officer overheard, intervened on their behalf and saw to it that they were put aboard a coal railcar bound for the city.

Around midnight, the eve of Mission Sunday, on October 18, 1947, the five Trappists, nearly dead, finally made it to Hsi Chih Men (West Straight Gate), which led to the Summer Palace. Not far away, stood the Marist Brothers Provincial House of Chala, home of their former teachers. They knocked at the gate.

Covered in their own filth, the emaciated men were crawling with lice. Unrecognizable as monks, their ankle-length habits had been slashed off at the hips by the Communists, who criticized them for wasting the People’s material, which could be used to make two shirts, for the People. But it wasn’t long before the Marists realized who their unannounced guests were, and dispatched an urgent message to the Benedictine house: Survivors from Our Lady of Consolation have arrived at Chala.

When the majority of the refugee monks had headed to Szechwan, Prior Paulinus, Father Simon Chang and Brother Stanislaus Jen had stayed behind to tie up all loose ends. Having just sold off the small herd of Holsteins to Prior Sylvester, it finally freed them up, and they were just about to go to the airport, to rejoin their Community in Our Lady of Joy’s refugee monastery, when they received the message from the Marists. Immediately, they canceled their travel plans and hurried to Chala to see the first survivors of the Death March, their confreres from Our Lady of Consolation.

Gaunt, with hollow eyes, the survivors collapsed as they reunited with their Trappist brethren. They described the horrors they had endured and witnessed: the tortures, interrogations, beatings, whips, clubs, handcuffs, chains, wounds so deep the white of bones shone through. Yes, there had been deaths. But there were survivors, and more were expected to arrive in Peking, any day.

Arrangements needed to be made for the new arrivals. Prior Paulinus decided that he and the other two must delay their departure, then he wrote to Szechwan and ordered Father Jean-Marie Struyven to search for and prepare a home for the survivors of the Death March. Immediately, Father Jean-Marie set to his task and began looking. However, around the end of November, after returning from scouting a location, he received a telegram from Archbishop Antonio Riberi, apostolic nuncio to China.

“Return to Peking. Urgent.”

As soon as he received the telegram, Father Jean-Marie dropped everything. He caught a flight, traveled nearly 1,000 miles in eight hours, arrived in Peking on November 27, and met with Archbishop Riberi. The nuncio’s demands were simple. He wanted to gather together the survivors of Our Lady of Consolation and rebuild their Community. And to make sure it happened, he would provide financial assistance, “No matter what the cost.”

Father Jean-Marie Struyven

Even though, at that time, the future looked uncertain in Peking, with the Communists just a gunshot away in Manchuria, Father Jean-Marie found the perfect place, and signed the papers on November 30, 1947, only three days after he had arrived in Peking. With $20,000 borrowed from the apostolic delegate, the Trappists purchased the Tong Hing Dairy Farm from the Russian family of General Dmitri Horvath, a wealthy, distant cousin of Tsar Nicolas II. In 1920, the Horvath family had fled Russia for Peking, to escape the Communists in their homeland. But with the encroaching Communists inching their way to Peking, the Horvaths wanted out.

The Dairy, located within the walls of Peking proper, was the biggest dairy in the city and had a great reputation. The purchase price included 50 milking cows and two properties, both with run-down buildings and about 3 acres of land between the two. The South Dairy, with its approximate 1 acre, was located at 16 Tong Chih Men (East Straight Gate) Street. A two-story, brick building, which faced the street, held the Dairy’s offices on the first floor. Behind, stood sheds for the cows, a pasteurizing plant and a cheese-making room. The North Dairy, located about a half mile north, had approximately 2 acres, with dilapidated buildings, including large sheds that housed straw.

Finally, with Father Jean-Marie put in charge of the Dairy and the surviving monks of Our Lady of Consolation, Prior Paulinus and Father Simon headed for Szechwan province to rejoin their Community of refugee monks of Our Lady of Joy, leaving behind Brother Stanislaus for a few months longer to help manage the Dairy during the transition stage.

On December 1, 1947, the monks who had survived the Death March moved into their new home, the Dairy. By then, six weeks after the first survivors had arrived, 17 more were reunited with the Community. Then, just in time for Christmas, two more arrived, Father Baldwin Uen and Father Nivardus Wang. But they weren’t the last ones.

Late one night, in January 1948, Father Jean-Marie received a phone call from the Marist Brothers. Hanging up the receiver, he grabbed some clothes, yelled orders to prepare a bath, ran outside, hopped onto his bike and pedaled off down the street, cutting through the blasting frigid air. Another survivor had arrived, barely, after a staggering journey on foot from Mu Chia Chwang, in the Mongolian mountains, had taken him a month. Father Jean-Marie wanted to be the first to embrace the survivor. It would be one of his greatest honors in life. Nearing the Marist Brothers Provincial House of Chala, his destination, he saw a thin figure in the dark.

“Da-Si!” Father Sebastianus Pian called out to Father Jean-Marie by his Chinese name.

But when Father Jean-Marie saw his former novice of 10 years earlier, shock seared through him. Almost unrecognizable. Up close, the face of Father Sebastianus, so gaunt, his skull poked through the yellowed, paper-thin skin. He was filthy, wearing rags, caked with his own excrement. Lice crept across his flesh. Yet, he was bathed in a spiritual beauty for all that he had endured for the Faith. With tears in his eyes, running down his face, Father Jean-Marie embraced his former novice. In his arms, he felt the bones of a living skeleton, and he held him to his chest for some time before shouting to the driver of a nearby jinrikisha. He helped the survivor up onto the seat for the 30-minute ride back to the Dairy, and when they arrived, the whole Community was standing at the door, waiting.

After a bath of renewal, a shave, even a hair cut for Father Sebastianus, his confreres surrounded him, nursed him with fresh cow’s milk and a bit of cake. Between sips, between bites, he recounted the Death March, the tortures, the bloody sacrifices of the monks. But in the midst of the gloomy memories, one of the monks expressed a beautiful thought.

“Tomorrow, you will celebrate your first Mass in six months,” the monk said.

“I don’t remember how to say Mass,” Father Sebastianus said, stunned by his own admission.

But the next morning, he did remember, as he offered the unbloody sacrifice of Calvary.

By the end of January 1948, 13 more survivors arrived. After the psyche-shattering experiences at the hands of the Communists, the traumatized monks withdrew into themselves. In their spare time, they created little reliquaries to hold the mementos they had carried out of the mountains: a piece of cloth stained with blood, a strand of hair – precious relics from the martyrs left behind in shallow graves.

Just beginning to emotionally stand on its own and take a few tentative steps, the Community was surprised by a rather unexpected visit. On Quasimodo Sunday, April 4, 1948, Father Abbot Benoît Morvan, of Our Lady of the Lighthouse Abbey, in Hokkaido, Japan, and Father Abbot Marie-Joseph Marquis, of the Abbaye Notre-Dame de Grâce, in Bricquebec, France, showed up at the Dairy. They had been ordered by the General Chapter to visit the monks of Our Lady of Consolation, the survivors of the Death March. The visitors were there to assess the situation.

Disappointed, the delegates found in the entire Dairy only two prayer books to be shared by all 13 choir monks, those priests and choir brothers required by “The Rule of St. Benedict” to chant in plainsong the seven daily hours of the Canonical Office. Lay brothers, those who labored, were not required to pray the Office. With the lack of books, there had been no set prayer schedule, other than morning Mass. Besides, the Dairy demanded labor from everyone, as if each were a lay brother. Only in their spare time did they spread mats on the chapel floor and kneel in prayer.

Seeing how dire the situation, the visiting abbots met privately with Father Jean-Marie and strongly suggested to him that the survivors of from Our Lady of Consolation merge with the refugees of Our Lady of Joy, who had relocated in Szechwan. They questioned his judgment and leadership.

“Why do you still want to ordain priests?” they asked him.

“Because the monastery is in need,” he answered. “Isn’t it the needs of the Church that has always based the call for orders?”

Father Jean-Marie also reiterated to them the instructions of Archbishop Riberi, that the monastery had to be resurrected, “No matter what the cost.”

After the guests left, Father Jean-Marie broached the topic during a meeting in the Chapter Room and explained about the pressure exerted by the visitors to abolish or merge. Unanimously, the monks voted to resist any abolition of their monastery or any merger with the refugees of Our Lady of Joy. They had survived the Death March; they were determined to survive The Visit.

And they did.

As a gesture of fraternal kindness from the Abdij der Trappisten, in Westmalle, Belgium, a crate arrived at the Dairy the following June. It was filled with prayer books. After nearly a year since they had been taken captive and forced on the Death March, they resumed the Canonical hours, and once again, they donned their religious garb – the choir monks in white robes with black scapulars, and the lay brothers in brown robes. Finally, the Community was beginning to feel like a religious Community again. They even had their first ordination. On May 30, 1948, Father Benedictus Wang was ordained in Peking’s Northern Cathedral of Pei-Tang, soon followed with the ordinations of Father Antonius Ngan and Father Nicesius Chang.

However, even as the Community grew in numbers and in joy, a darkness seeped into their happiness. In August 1948, the Communists had gained the upper hand in the Chinese Civil War, and they headed toward Peking, mowing down the Nationalists in their way.

The Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) – formed by a number of Republican cliques – became the single legitimate government of the Republic of China after the Republican Revolution of 1911 ousted the traditional rulers and ended the centuries-long dynastic rule of Imperial China. The death of Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi (old form of Cixi), in November 1908, had opened the door for change.

After a cell of the Communist Party formed in Shanghai in 1921, comrades slowly and secretly seeped into the ranks of the Nationalists. As head of the Kuomintang, Kai-Shek Chiang aborted its Communist contingent, because of its incitement and sadistic fondness of mob violence – especially at the encouragement of its ringleader Tse-Tung Mao. However, that attempt, in April 1927, to exterminate the Reds from the Nationalist ranks spawned the Chinese Civil War between the two factions that would last for decades.

At times, there were lulls in the fighting, especially after the Empire of Japan invaded Manchuria, in 1931, and spread through other regions of China. The Communists used that opportunity to operate a pseudo pro-Chinese-patriot, anti-Japanese-invader campaign to organize millions of peasants in the countryside under their Red banner. After Japan’s defeat in World War II, and surrender on August 15, 1945 (Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary), the civil war between the Nationalists and Communists heated up. After all, the number of Red soldiers had risen, and the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics had handed over to their Chinese comrades a bulging war chest overflowing with Japan’s surrendered weapons.

The United States attempted an intervention. On December 23, 1945, retired United States Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall arrived in China. His mediation mission plan: work out a deal so that both the Nationalists and Communists could govern together peacefully. For starters, there would be a committee of three, a temporary tripartite joining of three heads – American, Nationalist, Communist – to one Chinese body, albeit hobbled.

At that point, the Nationalists held key positions in China and had the upper hand militaristically. It looked like it would be only a matter of time before they would reign supreme in the Republic of China. But that was when the strategically weak Communists went to Marshall and demanded a truce. It was a ploy. But the naïve Americans, not understanding the true, deceitful nature of the Communists, lobbied Chiang for a time-out. Reluctantly, the Generalissimo agreed.

The ceasefire Truce Agreement announced on January 10, 1946, lasted just long enough to reverse the military situation, tilting the militaristic advantage toward the Communists’ field. And Marshall’s mission ended – a complete failure – in January 1947.

As the Communist threat neared closer to Peking, by August 1948, some of the Trappists in the Dairy, who had survived the Death March in the Mongolian mountains, were filled with absolute terror.

With fresh memories of torture at the brutal, blood-soaked hands of the Reds, some of the monks wanted to leave. Immediately. Their superior, Father Jean-Marie, tried to calm them, even gave everyone permission to flee, but he told them that he was staying and encouraged everyone to stay with him.

“Know that if you flee, it would be because of fear. Your duty, however hard it may be, is to stay in the middle of the Church in China, of which you are members,” he told them.

Most agreed to stay and tough it out with their superior. Still, others demanded to go to Szechwan to join the refugees of Our Lady of Joy, but conditions there, telegrams revealed, weren’t very reassuring. The monks of Our Lady of Consolation had survived the Death March, they had survived the visit of the Trappist delegates, they would try to survive the next onslaught.

By October 1948, the political situation deteriorated rapidly. Along with the Nationalist’s military defeats throughout China, came their financial collapse. Inflation hit. Father Jean-Marie, the business head of the Dairy, noted in his books that a single liter of milk sold for 1.5 million yuan, Chinese dollars. The most common bill used at that time was a 12,000 yuan.

Then, in the first week of November 1948, Mukden, the capital of Manchuria, fell to the Communists. As the Reds marched toward their new urban trophy, fleeing refugees bartered family heirlooms for bits of food. Nationalist soldiers packed atop locomotive coal tenders, headed for hopeless battles elsewhere. Civilians holding their few earthly possessions boarded Civil Air Transport planes owned by the legendary Claire Lee Chennault, lovingly referred to by his pilots as Old Leatherface of the Flying Tigers.

On November 20, 1948, after conquering Manchuria, Communist General Piao Lin’s troops marched toward the ancient city of Peking. A siege was expected and imminent. Food became scarce. Powers of the foreign consuls urged their nationals to leave immediately.

Panic set in.

But for a brief moment in that November, light overcame darkness, with the arrival at the Dairy of the three last survivors: Brother Rochus Fan, Father Benedictus-Josephus Labre Hou and Brother Adrianus Wang. However, fresh with the horrors of what they had endured and witnessed at the hands of the Communists, they brought more bad news.

Our Lady of Consolation had lost 33 monks to martyrdom.

Of the 74 monks taken captive in July 1947, only 41 had survived the Death March. Reunited at the Dairy, Father Jean-Marie had done all he could to keep the Community together and work for its growth. With good results. On January 9, 1949, Father Theophanes An, Father Gratianus Cheung and Father Macarius Fu were ordained in a ceremony held in the nearby Salesian chapel that was located between the North Dairy and the South Dairy.

Considering the circumstances, the monastery was flourishing, but so was the power of the Communists.

Unstoppable, the fatal Red tide flowed toward Peking, surrounding the ancient city, splashing upon its walls. It wasn’t long before it would soon drown the Nationalists.

On January 23, 1949, Nationalist General Tso-Yi Fu surrendered the Northern Capital, handing the city over to the Reds. He was the same general who had marched his troops – twice – in 1947 to the abbey of Our Lady of Consolation. Both, failed attempts to set the monks free from the clutches of the Communists. What he didn’t know at the time was that his trusted secret code officer of 20 years, General Pao-Shan Ten, was a longtime Communist mole who had informed his comrades of the impending rescue plans, giving them enough time to herd their prisoners, the monks, out of the abbey and into the mountains.

After the surrender of Peking, came “liberation” day, February 1, 1949, the day the Communists “liberated” Peking from the Nationalists.

A cold wind from Siberia blew through the city that day. But from Manchuria, another wind, a killer wind, blew through the city’s gates.

Pekingese men in long Chinese gowns and Western fedoras lined the streets and smiled as stilt walkers from the Peking Bathhouse Guild used their spindly appendages to lead the victory parade for the Communist conquerors. A marching brass band announced the approach of the soldiers in the Red army infantry from Manchuria. Three abreast, they filed through the city streets, followed by Party propagandists handing out leaflets of Marxist ideology. Youths celebrated by dancing in the streets to “Yang Ko,” the rice-planting song that became the Communist victory song.

The hero of the parade: Tse-Tung Mao, the conqueror. On posters carried by Party workers, Mao’s smile gleamed above his siu mai-sized chin mole. At the main gate of the Imperial City, his image was hoisted high above the crowd.

As for the survivors at the Dairy, knee-knocking, bone-chilling hit. With plans of escape, the monks sold some of the milk cows then booked a plane to Yunnan, in southern China. But it was too late. The plane never arrived.

Two members of the Community fled from Peking to Kalgan, in the Mongolian mountains, where they found sanctuary with the Scheut fathers and encountered the provincial superior of Siwantze, Bishop Leon Jean Marie de Smedt, (Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary). The bishop, a Belgian missionary who later died in 1951 in a Communist prison, persuaded the two monks to return to their Community, which they did. The two were welcomed home with a festive party, just like prodigal sons.

All the while, no matter how bleak the situation seemed, Father Jean-Marie kept at it. Relentless in his mission to re-build the Community of Our Lady of Consolation survivors, in February 1949, he even purchased a house adjacent to the Dairy. After the monks blocked all exits to outsiders, it served as a scriptorium and as a chapel for private Masses.

However, just as Father Jean-Marie kept at it, so, too, did the Communists, who didn’t stop at Peking.

On April 23, 1949, the Reds marched triumphantly into Nanking, the Southern Capital. Only a few days earlier, the Nationalists abandoned the city for Canton. Then on October 15, they evacuated Canton for Chungking. Then on November 25, they evac’d Chungking for Chengtu, just 12 miles from Our Lady of Joy’s refugee monastery. For the monks who had sought safety in Szechwan, away from the Communists, the situation did not look good. If the Trappists remained in China, persecution was not a question. It was certainty.

Again, the desperate refugee monks looked for an escape. And again, it was up to Father Prior Paulinus Li to look for a way out for his monks, any way out of Szechwan, and, suddenly, from out of nowhere, he received a card from Father Abbot James Fox. It was a formal invitation to attend the 100^th anniversary of the Abbey of Gethsemani, in Trappist, Kentucky, on June 1, 1949. After a brief conference with the Community, it was decided. Prior Paulinus had nothing else. That was something. Perhaps he could get his refugee monks to America. He would go.

Prior Paulinus arrived in Gethsemani on May 26, but because he was only fluently conversant in Mandarin Chinese, he spoke with no one until June 1, when he met Archbishop Pin “Paul” Yu, the archbishop of Nanking, who had been exiled by the Communists to the island of Formosa. The two priests had something in common. Because each had close ties to the Nationalist government, they were both wanted men by the Communists, who considered anyone with current affiliations with the Kuomintang – described as reactionaries by the Communists – to be active counterrevolutionaries – enemies of the Reds. However, because the archbishop did have a connection with the KMT, it was a possibility that he could provide the Trappists with 200 acres on the island of Formosa. To discuss the matter further, the archbishop suggested that, on his return flight to the Orient from the Occident, representatives of the Trappist monks should meet him during his stopover in Canton.

Prior Paulinus quickly dashed off a letter to Szechwan, prompting Father Victor Chu and Father Simon Chang to meet with Archbishop Yu in Canton, which they did. During the meeting, the archbishop promised land, but he also warned that the future of the island, 91 miles from China’s shoreline, looked uncertain and could face the same fate as the mainland: Communist domination. With that warning, the Trappists no longer considered Formosa a possibility. However, after meeting with the archbishop, Father Victor and Father Simon remained in Canton, until they were able to slip into the British crown colony of Hong Kong and into freedom, on August 18, 1949.

North America still looked promising, though, so Prior Paulinus remained in Gethsemani for a month, waiting for an opportunity to speak with Abbot James, to ask him to accept the Trappists from China. However, when the opportunity arose, Abbot James, unaware of the reality in China, thought the idea was ridiculous.

With hopes deflated, Prior Paulinus left North America at the end of July for France, to seek advice from his European superiors. First, he visited Father Abbot Marie-Joseph Marquis, at Abbaye Notre-Dame de Grâce, in Bricquebec. Nothing. Next, he attended the religious order’s yearly meeting, the General Chapter, held in September, in France. Again, nothing. Absolutely nothing at all was discussed about the situation in China. Crushed emotionally, Prior Paulinus spoke with the abbot general, Father Dominique Nogues, asking him for advice. In an effort to help, the abbot general wrote a letter for Prior Paulinus to present to the American abbots.

With the letter tucked away, Prior Paulinus returned to America. First, to the Deep South and the suffocating summer humidity, at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, in Conyers, Georgia. Then north, to Our Lady of the Valley (old form of St. Joseph’s Abbey), in Spencer, Massachusetts, where he met with Father Abbot Edmond Futterer, and presented the letter from the abbot general. Not only did the abbot tell him he would welcome some of the monks, but he also obtained free passage for them on the SS General WH Gordon, then hinted that Father Abbot Lucien Saint-Pierre, of Our Lady of the Prairies Abbey, in Manitoba, Canada, might accept some of the refugees.

Now, with an escape plan ready, Prior Paulinus wrote a letter to his monks. He had arranged their new living accommodations and their transportation; all they had to do was show up at the dock in Hong Kong.

Not so fast, and not so easy. Life in China was getting as sticky as a bowl of rice.

In Peking, on October 1, 1949, Mao – the materialist messiah of the “new” China – stood at the Gate of Heavenly Peace overlooking Tiananmen Square and announced the birth of the Marxist monster, the People’s Republic of China – with himself the head of the beast. With a ribbon on his chest, he stood before an arrangement of microphones and announced in his tinny Hunan dialect few understood, “The Central People's Government Council of the People’s Republic of China took over office today in this capital.”

Within days, Canton fell to the Communists, and the unstoppable Red tidal wave drowned the city, the doorway to Hong Kong, making escape from the mainland more difficult, and more dangerous. But there were 40 monks in Szechwan who still had to get out. They had to get to Hong Kong to get on that boat to America.

The exodus began.

On October 24, 1949, Father Stanislaus Jen, Father Nicolaus Tien and a few others fled the monastery in Szechwan, took the ferry from Chengtu to Chungking, then, from there, flew to Hong Kong. Father Alphonse Poisson, the Chengtu vicar general, was furious at them for leaving; nonetheless, others followed their confreres and also fled Szechwan.

Father Benedictus Chao and Father Denis Van Leeuw made their way to the Chengtu airport, which was packed with other displaced persons waiting, hoping for evacuation planes. After days of no hope, most everyone left the airport discouraged, except the two monks. They had no money. They had no place to go. So they continued to wait, praying for a way out.

Late in the day of December 8, 1949, the buzz of a twin-propeller airplane overhead could be heard as it circled the airport. The two monks ran out and looked up. Through the fog and the mist they saw an olive-drab C-47. When it approached, they could see the flaming cross logo of the Lutheran World Federation Mission. It was the St. Paul, the Protestant plane that flew escaping missionaries out of China. After the pilot, Captain William “Bill” Dudding, landed the plane, the two monks ran over. Even though the only thing in their pockets was lint, they were welcomed aboard the cargo plane.

Finally, around 3 a.m., on December 9, the crew got the go-ahead for take-off, and the St. Paul rolled down the runway and lifted up its nose, pointing toward Hong Kong. It would be the St. Paul’s final evacuation flight out of mainland China.

Not far behind them, another C-47, took off. It was the May-Ling, Kai-Shek Chiang’s plane christened in honor of his wife, May-Ling Chiang (née Soong). The Generalissimo had waited. The May-Ling headed for Formosa, which would become the seat of the Republic of China. He had wanted to be the last evacuee to leave Chungking. The next day, December 10, the Communists would make Chengtu their final conquest.

At 9 a.m., after six hours in the air, the St. Paul approached the British crown colony’s Kai Tak Airport but was refused permission to land because of high-force winds. With only a few drops of fuel remaining in the tank, the captain had no choice but make an emergency landing.

Once on solid ground, Father Benedictus and Father Denis left the airport and made their way to the white-washed Béthanie Sanatorium, the gothic-inspired sanctuary built halfway up a hilltop in Pokfulam by the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris, in 1875. The monks reunited with some of their confreres.

Unfortunately, of the 40 monks of Our Lady of Joy, only 10 would make it to Hong Kong: Father Simon Chang, Father Benedictus Chao, Father Benedictus-Josephus Labre Chao, Father Bernardus Chao, Father Victor Chu, Father Malachi Gao, Father Stanislaus Jen, Father Nicolaus Tien, Father Denis Van Leeuw and Father Bede Wong.

And of those, only eight were medically ready to leave for North America after their required physical examinations. Father Simon Chang had a blood problem, and Father Benedictus Chao had an eye problem, which prevented them from boarding. A third, Father Bernardus Chao, remained behind to act as mediator between the refugees in the monastery in Szechwan and the rest of the world.

Nonetheless, seven seaworthy monks sailed for America. At midnight, the very first minutes of Christmas day, when light overcomes darkness, the refugee monks sailed east, headed for the West. In a true state of spiritual poverty – complete detachment from worldly things – all they had were their prayers and a bedroll as they boarded the SS General WH Gordon. With Hong Kong to its stern, the ship headed for the Formosa Strait, facing a strong wind from the north and rough seas. All monks hit their bunks, where they remained through Christmas Day. So seasick, they were unable to celebrate the Feast of the Nativity. However, after sailing through the Strait, most were able to crawl out of bed, except for Father Victor, who never did get his sea legs and remained below deck during the entire voyage, until they docked in San Francisco on January 9, 1950. Later that month, Brother Marcus Chang, a Marist Brother, arrived, with plans to join the Trappist order while in Canada. In February, the two who had remained behind for medical reasons finally made it to the same dock.

However, as the refugee monks had sailed away on Christmas morning toward their new lives of freedom in North America, at the very same time, those who had remained behind in Szechwan watched as the Red army marched into the city of Chengtu, the capital of Szechwan, and only 12 miles away from Our Lady of Joy’s refugee monastery.

Wakened to a new reality, Father Vincentius Shi, the superior at the monastery in the absence of Prior Paulinus, sent the two youngest monks, blood brothers Brother Maurus Pei and Brother Placides Pei, as a gesture of good will to greet the Communist officials. In turn, the Reds interrogated the young monks, questioning them about the weapons in the monastery. Dissatisfied with the answers, the soldiers beat the young monks, then tied their hands behind their backs and hanged them from village trees by their wrists until they fainted. Only after the Communists pillaged the monastery, forcing the monks to hand over their seven guns, did they, finally, cut down the brothers from the trees.

Monks with a few of their seven guns

After that, the winter in Szechwan was dark, very, very dark for the Trappists. The Communists continued their demands, eventually depleting the monastery’s storerooms of rice, wheat and oil. Also they imposed heavy taxes. It had been a tactic used by the Communists throughout China in their occupied zones to put landowners under financially, so the Reds would gain control of land and property. It worked. The Community soon became destitute. The monks met and discussed what to do. Because China was still in a transition period, there was still freedom – although limited – to move about the country.

Even though Father Vincentius had decided to stay, he gave everyone permission to do as they saw best. The monks could return to the north and find some way to make a living. Or go to Hong Kong and look for Prior Paulinus. Or remain in Szechwan.

“Every man for himself,” he announced, in an act of generosity.

In spring, many migrated to freedom.

The first group left on May 18, 1950, consisting of four: Brother Jacobus Chang, Brother Ignatius Feng, Brother Clementius Lu and Brother Felix Ren.

A few days later, on May 21, a second group of four left: Brother Fabianus Chang, Brother Petrus Chang, Brother Maurus Pei and Brother Placidus Pei.

The third group – consisting of one monk: Brother John Baptist Pei – left on June 1.

Everyone headed to Poki, in Shensi province, considered the gateway between eastern and western China. In hired trucks, they spent much of the 400-mile journey either at the side of the road when the trucks broke down or with their shoulders at the tailgates, pushing the metal monsters when they had too little horsepower to roll up the mountain roads on their own and needed assistance. But it was a wonderful opportunity for the monks to be tourists in their beautiful homeland.

First to arrive in Poki, Brother John Baptist had passed everyone on the road. But he was soon joined by the others, and all boarded a train for Chengchow in Honan province, another 400 miles, due east. And it was in Chengchow, where they said their good byes and went their separate ways.

One group of four monks headed north for another 250 miles, to Shihchiachuang, where they split up again. Brother Clementius Lu and Brother Felix Ren continued to Peking, but Brother Jacobus Chang and Brother Ignatius Feng exited the train at the Liu Sing Chong station, to see their old home, the original Our Lady of Joy monastery, on the alluvial island.

It had been three years since the refugee monks fled, and much had changed. But Father Augustinus Meng and Father Edmond Palleger, two of the founders of the monastery in 1928, were still there and very happy to see them. A few other monks, including Brother Hilarius Shen, had remained also, but were scattered throughout the local countryside, forced to become workers, after the Communists had taken possession of the 300-acre property and converted it to an atheist-run agrarian state-owned business. Its new name: Progressive Farm. The watermelon field, peach trees, hen house, cow shed, apiary and pig pens – all gone. Only the vineyard remained. The Communists wanted the few remaining monks to make wine for the Red table. The scriptorium, which had become a hospital, had its books strewn carelessly along the corridor floor. The sacristy had become a dormitory.

After a short stay, they continued on to Peking.

The others, who had headed south from Chengchow, decided to continue on to Canton. Brother Fabianus Chang, Brother Petrus Chang, Brother John Baptist Pei, Brother Maurus Pei and Brother Placidus Pei arrived at the Sacred Heart Cathedral – called the Notre Dame of the Far East – on June 13, 1950. They decided to wait for Prior Paulinus to rescue them and take them to Hong Kong. During that down time, others from the monastery joined them, until the group grew to 15. One of them, Brother Raphael Xie, did not want to wait. Instead, he decided to go to Hong Kong, himself, and look for Prior Paulinus, who was living in a rented house in the Shatin district of Hong Kong, with Father Bernardus Chao and Father Joseph Lu, a refugee priest and vicar general of the diocese of Ankwo.

When Brother Raphael showed up on their doorstep and explained to Prior Paulinus that 14 others waited for him in Canton, it was a complete surprise to him. And not long after that, two more surprises shocked Prior Paulinus when he received two letters: one from Father Abbot François Régis Jammes, his superior in France, and the other from Archbishop Riberi, the apostolic nuncio in China, who was the liaison between the Vatican and the dioceses and religious institutes in China.

Each letter contained the same message: “Return to China, and look after your monks.”

Back at the Dairy in Peking, Father Jean-Marie – with all good intentions – had written numerous reports, informing Abbot François Régis that it would be better for the monks to remain on the mainland, rather than to wander about the world. After all, he reasoned, the Dairy business was going well, the Community was growing and life in Peking looked promising, still with some freedoms. His reports had made an impact. Abbot François Régis communicated with Archbishop Riberi. The result, the two letters.

Prior Paulinus realized that if he obeyed the order, it basically meant suicide. He prayed on the matter, and on July 11, 1950, knowingly risking his life, he shed his religious habit for street clothes and re-entered the mainland in Canton. He found his monks, who had been waiting for him, waiting for the passes that he would have in his pocket that would take them to freedom. They were all very excited to finally be going to Hong Kong.

Not Hong Kong, he told them, Peking.

What? They thought it was a joke.

No. It was not a joke. It was an order.

Shocked. Stunned. They didn’t want to, but they obeyed. On July 15, 1950, Prior Paulinus and the 14 monks split into two groups and headed the 1,400 miles north to Peking. When they arrived at the Dairy, on July 23, 1950, Father Jean-Marie was very happy to see everyone, especially Prior Paulinus.

But more bad news soon followed.

The 14 monks of Our Lady of Joy joined the 6 who had already arrived there. If the entire 20 were to stay at the Dairy, they would have to become Consolation monks. No. They were against it. In a move to alleviate the tension and tight accommodations at the Dairy, Father Augustinus, formerly a diocesan priest in Peking before he joined the Trappists and moved onto the alluvial island, arranged for the 20 refugee monks to move to a vineyard belonging to the diocese. There they could make their living.

As for Prior Paulinus, because of his affiliations with the Nationalists, he was listed as an enemy of the People and risked arrest – or worse – if he stayed in Peking. He even posed a threat to the safety of his hosts anywhere he stayed. He sought help from Father Li-Juan Wu, the designated vicar general for Cardinal Ken-Hsin “Thomas” Tien, who had fled Peking in 1948. Father Wu warned him that he could not stay at the residence house for priests; however, he had an idea.

“Go to the hospital, and disguise yourself as a patient, but leave Peking as soon as possible,” Father Wu told him.

Prior Paulinus headed to St. Vincent Hospital, but when he arrived, he found out that the registrar was a member of the Communist secret police, so he fled to the home of his mother, brother and sister.

“Leave immediately,” his own family told him. “The police will be here.”

He went to the family home of one of the monks.

After a few minutes, they told him, “Leave quickly. The police might be coming soon.”

Prior Paulinus immediately fled Peking and sought refuge 800 miles away in Hankow with the Marist Brothers, who told him the situation was the same there, but suggested that he return to Canton. So back to Canton he went, back to the Sacred Heart Cathedral, where he requested sanctuary. Granted. For a month he remained at the cathedral, with thoughts dwelling on opening a monastery along the seashore. He wrote letters to bishops. He prayed. And he prayed some more.

As Father Prior Paulinus bided his time in Canton praying for a miracle, a miracle was in the works 77 miles south, in the Pearl River Delta.

Hong Kong’s Bishop Enrico Pascal Valtorta (Society of Foreign Missions of Paris) learned about the plight of the Trappists, and he wanted to do something for the monks. He recruited help from Irish Father Thomas F. Ryan (Society of Jesus), who sought out Father Bernardus Chao and Brother Raphael Xie, suggesting they contact Prior Paulinus immediately and invite him to the Pearl of the Orient to discuss the possibility of a Trappist foundation.

When Prior Paulinus received the letter, he rushed to the border, but found that free access to Hong Kong from the People’s Republic had already ended on May 9, 1950. Because the Communists still permitted Chinese to leave the mainland, the British had closed off the border with checkpoints. Hong Kong officials could only accommodate so many true refugees, and they didn’t want to accommodate Communist spies slipping in, posing as refugees.

He thought about Macao, a gambler’s paradise. The Portuguese colony let practically anyone and everyone enter. So he made it onto Macao, where he was received by Franciscan Father Theobald Diederich (Order of Friars Minor), rector of St. Joseph Seminary. From there, Prior Paulinus obtained a pass for Hong Kong, and on September 8, 1950, the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady, he moved back into the house in Shatin with Father Bernardus and Brother Raphael.

Almost immediately, Prior Paulinus met with Father Ryan. Then on September 11, 1950, he met with Bishop Valtorta, and a settlement was agreed upon. Again, it was time for writing letters. After the meeting, Prior Paulinus sent one to his superior in France, Father Abbot François Régis Jammes, requesting permission to settle his monks in Hong Kong. The other letter, he sent to his refugee monks in Peking, requesting they join him in Hong Kong.

Abbot François Régis responded quickly, yet coldly. Yes, he acquiesced, Prior Paulinus could do as he saw best. However, the reaction of the monks in Peking was, as expected, not joyous. They received the letter with scorn, especially those 14 he had just ordered to leave Canton and escorted to Peking. Most of them, disgusted, discouraged, disillusioned. Only eight obeyed.

While waiting for the arrival of the monks from the mainland, Prior Paulinus scouted around the British crown colony’s 263 islands for the site of their future monastery. In November 1950, he, Father Bernardus and Brother Raphael traveled to Lantao, the largest-yet-least-inhabited of all the islands in Hong Kong, the Fragrant Harbor.

After climbing atop a grassy hill, they overlooked the valley of Tai Shui Hang and envisioned their new home tucked between the slopes. Following a rendition of “Ave Maris Stella” and a recitation of a Hail Mary, Prior Paulinus requested the miraculous medal that hung around the neck of Father Bernardus. Blessing the Medal of the Immaculate Conception, Prior Paulinus then buried the object of devotion, asking Our Lady to intercede and reserve the spot for her refugee monastery, Our Lady of Joy.

Within four months – with help from Bishop Valtorta, Father Ryan, Hong Kong Governor Alexander Grantham, district officer Paul Tsui (and the Virgin Mary) – the Trappists received permission from London to rent the 73-acre valley of Tai Shui Hang for HK$8 per acre, per year.

Meanwhile, the eight who had decided to leave Peking for Hong Kong had been wending their way south.

The first group left for Hong Kong on November 2, 1950. Dressed in blue “liberation suits,” Brother Fabianus Chang, Brother Bruno Hsieh and Brother Idesbald Gao headed to Macao, where they arrived on November 12 and sailed for Hong Kong; however, they were forbidden to enter because they had no passports, which was news to them. So they turned around, returned to Macao and wrote to Prior Paulinus requesting the necessary paperwork. Finally, on November 22, they left Macao, crossed the Tiger’s Mouth – the Chu Kiang River Delta – and arrived at the Kowloon Bus Station, where they reunited with their confreres. With the extra three monks, the small rented house in Shatin became too cramped, so Prior Paulinus rented a larger space. On November 27, 1950, they all moved into a single floor of a house on Clear Water Bay Road, across the street from the Home of the Aged, run by the French-based Little Sisters of the Poor.

The second group – Brother Jacobus Chang and Brother John Baptist Pei – left Peking on November 30, 1950, and upon their arrival at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Canton, on December 7, 1950, a priest warned them to get out of China as soon as possible, because it would probably be the last time for them to get off the mainland without special permission. That same night they sailed to Macao and arrived in Hong Kong on December 15, without a major glitch.

Brother Petrus Chang and Brother Michaelus Cui arrived in Hong Kong on December 20.

Last to leave Peking was Brother Linus Shang, who, without a travel pass, adopted the character of a madman, which he hoped would enable him to travel the five days via train without being questioned by authorities. For his costume, he donned a worn-out cotton Mao suit. For props, he armed himself with branches, broken from fruit trees and grape vines. Feigning sleep for most of the trip, he avoided trouble until he reached Canton, where officers confronted him about not having a pass.

“I am a vineyard worker, and I know how to plant the fruit trees,” Brother Linus said, holding up the branches he had brought along. “My brother is working in Macao and wants me to help him. He has asked me to bring along some branches of vine and of fruit trees.”

“Don’t you know that Macao is a foreign country?” the officers asked him.

“I didn’t know that!” he answered, with an expression across his face of complete stupidity. “My brother asked me to go there, so there should be no difficulty to go to Macao!”

The officers looked at one another.

“This idiot doesn’t even know where Macao is. Let him go,” one said to the other.

Brother Linus slipped through and arrived in Hong Kong right before Christmas.

Refugee monks incognito in Liberation suits

By the end of 1950, 11 monks had made it to Hong Kong, to freedom: Brother Fabianus Chang, Brother Jacobus Chang, Brother Petrus Chang, Father Bernardus Chao, Brother Michaelus Cui, Brother Idesbald Gao, Brother Bruno Hsieh, Father Prior Paulinus Li, Brother John Baptist Pei, Brother Linus Shang and Brother Raphael Xie.

And they had just made it, barely. For the Communists closed off their side of the border with checkpoints in February 1951. After the new exit-entry regulations went into effect, it would take nothing less than a miracle to leave the mainland.

The 11 monks, including shadow of Prior Paulinus

March 29, 1951 was a monumental day for the self-exiled monks. That was when the 11 men – and two yellow-haired puppies adopted from a Franciscan house in Hong Kong – arrived on Lantao to begin their work of building a new home for the refugee Community of Our Lady of Joy. A brand-new beginning, with nothing in the virgin valley except snakes, birds and the trickling of two small rivers. But it was home. And they were free.

However, the unintentional forced split of the refugee Community of Our Lady of Joy caused great suffering. As its contingent on Lantao island began to rebuild itself, its contingent on the mainland in Szechwan began to crumble.

In the bourgeoning People’s Republic of China, the regime plotted its nationwide purge targeting Roman Catholics, and officially introduced the Three-Self Reform Movement at a meeting held in Szechwan province, on November 30, 1950. That was soon followed with the publication of the “Manifesto on Independence and Reform,” which demanded the end of relations with all imperialist countries and declared the beginning of a new Chinese catholic church. Allegedly signed by Father Liang-Zuo Wang, a parish priest in Kwang Yuan, the “Manifesto” subsequently ran in all Communist newspapers, with a big to-do.

In part, the “Manifesto” claimed, “Since Catholicism came to China, imperialists have tried by all possible methods to use the Church as a forerunner of aggression…We are determined to build up a new church that practices self-government, self-support and self-propagation. We will not allow the Holy Church to be soiled by imperialist filth.”

The Three-Self Reform Movement was the Communist attempt to hammer a wedge between the Chinese Faithful and the Pope. By establishing the schismatic organization, which would later become the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, the regime elevated itself to be the supreme authority, even in matters pertaining to dogma and theology.

However, the Roman Catholic Church has always taught that there is only one supreme authority in the Church: the Pope. The papal primacy is a divine institution, and the Petrine powers – passed from pope to pope – was, is and always will be the mystical head of Christendom, preserving the unity of the Church, the mystical body of Christ.

The “Catechism of the Council of Trent,” issued by order of Pope Pius V and published in 1566, declared, “The Church has but one ruler and one governor, the invisible one, Christ, whom the eternal Father hath made head over all the Church, which is his body; the visible one, the Pope, who as legitimate successor of Peter, the Prince of the Apostles, fills the Apostolic chair. It is the unanimous teaching of the Fathers that this visible head is necessary to establish and preserve unity in the Church.”

Nonetheless, the Red regime made it clear to the Faithful: Either join the Three-Self Reform Movement, or else.

The Trappist monks chose or else.

One gloomy morning, on February 28, 1951, the Communists sent their goons to the refugee monastery in Szechwan, with an arrest order for all remaining 11 monks – four priests and seven brothers, who refused to renounce the Pope by joining the Movement. The Communists – vowed atheists – were intent on brainwashing the monks to apostatize, to give up their Catholicism. As men of God, the priests and monks posed major obstacles to the atheist state.

Karl Marx, the father of Communism and the anti-Christ of the 19^th century, called out the Pope in the very first paragraph of his 23-page pamphlet, “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” published in 1848, describing the Pontiff as an exorcist bent on destroying Communism. But it was Marx who intended to destroy. He wrote, “Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality,” revealing his hatred for the Catholic Church, for its traditions, and for its moral teachings, which regard life as sacred and encourage man out of the muck and mire, and to elevate mind and body to holiness, to God.

The monks, hauled before the People’s Court, were interrogated, tortured, then locked up for a night in a cell in San Ho village. The next day, March 1, most were released, with the exception of the three priests, Father Vincentius Shi, Father Albertus Wei and Father Yves You, who were trucked off to Tien Hui Regional Office and incarcerated.

“Let us pray for one another,” Father Vincentius whispered, before they were separated.

No one dared reply.

After one week, the priests were transferred to a large prison in the Public Security Bureau of Chengtu Hsien. Once in custody, they were repeatedly dragged out of their cells for interrogations, euphemistically referred to as preliminary trials. Interrogators held the titles of judges. The monks were tortured. They were ordered to apostatize.

“You need no longer sing the praise of God, for it is now proclaimed that there is no God,” one interrogator taunted.

Months crawled by, then in the beginning of June 1951, the “struggle” against the imprisoned Trappists escalated.

“From now on, stop praying,” a guard told Father Yves You.

“I must pray,” he replied.

“If you want to pray, kneel on the urinal barrel and pray.”

Father Yves continued to pray, for which he was beaten. One day, he was dragged to the cell of Father Albertus.

“Do you still pray?” the guard asked Father Albertus.

“I gave it up a long time ago,” Father Albertus shrugged it off.

“Look,” the guard said to Father Yves. “You came with him to learn. He has changed his mind. Why haven’t you changed?”

Until then, Father Albertus’ cellmates had no idea that he was a priest. He had been friendly, chatted with his cellmates, and when he had prayed, he prayed privately, so no would notice. But once they found out, they targeted him incessantly in everything, and he became the victim of their daily criticisms and was frequently snitched on during the day for minor infractions.

Then, on June 13, again, a guard stood in Father Yves’ cell.

“Does man come from monkeys or from God?” the guard asked the group of inmates.

“From monkeys,” they answered simultaneously.

Father Yves remained silent and tried to disappear into the corner.

The guard scanned the cell with his eyes until he found Father Yves.

“What do you say? Does man come from monkeys or from God?” he asked Father Yves, indicating for him to stand. Again, he asked, “Does man come from monkeys or from God?”

“God made man,” Father Yves said, standing.

“God made man? Now tell it to the rest,” the guard ordered.

“God made man,” he repeated.

“Did Yves You say the right thing?” the guard asked the others.

“No! Wrong!” they yelled in unison.

Walking over to Father Yves, the guard balled up his fist and pounded the priest in the chest seven or eight times before he fell to the floor.

“Hold him up!” the guard ordered two prisoners.

They grabbed Father Yves and picked him up, steadying the human target as he received more blows to his chest.

Finished with Father Yves, the guard then walked over to the cell of Father Albertus, who had heard everything that had just happened before with Father Yves.

“Did man come from monkeys, or was he created by God?” the guard asked Father Albertus.

“This question is too deep. I have been studying it for more than 20 years, and I have not solved it. The Church does not forbid us to say man has evolved from monkeys. This is how the question stands,” Father Albertus answered, shrugging it off.

Next, the guard went to the cell of Father Vincentius. Earlier in the day he had broken a bowl while eating, for which he was severely punished.

The guard then asked him the same question: “Does man come from monkeys, or was he created by God?”

“God created man,” Father Vincentius answered.

“Did he say the right thing?” the guard asked the others.

“No! Wrong!” they answered simultaneously.

Enraged at the humble priest’s defiance, the guard attacked Father Vincentius, punched him seven or eight times, literally trying to pound the ideology of atheistic evolution into him.

That was the end of the study session that day.

Communists – materialists and vowed atheists – have consistently promoted the ideology that God does not exist, that God was, and is, merely a superstitious belief; therefore, God could never have created man. Communists have propagated the ideology that man, from his labor, created himself.

One of the most popular slogans repeated by the Chinese Communists and hung everywhere in large character posters, labor created the world, was taken from Frederick Engels’ unfinished work, “Dialectics of Nature,” in which Engels attempted to apply Karl Marx’s theory of dialectical materialism to science. More specifically, Engels applied it to the theory of evolution, in Chapter 9: “The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man.”

“Labor is the source of all wealth, the economists assert. It is this next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is also infinitely more than this. It is the primary basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labor created man himself.”

For Communists, the ape became man, because the ape labored, used the hand to make fire. The atheist world view: the degradation of man, to exploit man, just like a slave, like an animal. For in Communism, all things – including people – belong to the government. It is easier to subject a creature that evolved from animals.

Communists boasted that their thinking was progressive, that Communism destroyed the old world for a new world, destroyed the old man for a new man. They scoffed at Catholics, calling them the old-fashioned man stuck in the old-fashioned world.

Days later, the three priests were told to stand on a platform in front of a group of inmates seated before them. Ordered to preach the Faith, they were informed that if they preached well, everyone would be believers. It was a trick, the three knew it, and they tried to get out of it. But, impossible.

Father Vincentius stepped up on the platform first. He had barely opened his mouth before someone interrupted him.

“Enough! Come down!” a guard shouted, then ordered the priest tied up with his wrists roped to his ankles. He could neither stand nor lie down, only sit. Then everyone broke for mealtime. Someone spooned rice into Father Vincentius’ bowl, placed it on the floor in front of him, and the priest was forced to crawl like a worm to his bowl, from which he slurped up his food like an animal.

After the meal, Father Yves was next ordered to stand on the platform.

“Just what Vincentius Shi said,” he said, knowing that he, too, would be hogtied, with wrists to ankles, just like Father Vincentius. And he was.

Finally, Father Albertus was ordered to the platform.

He kept silent.

“Was the world created by labor?” the guard asked.

“Yes,” Father Albertus said.

The guard continued, “Did man evolve from monkeys?”

“I don’t deny,” Father Albertus said.

“Your thinking has improved,” the guard said, praising the priest.

Father Albertus stepped down from the platform. His hands and feet remained free, as those of Father Vincentius and Father Yves remained tied. The two were carried back to their cells and received nothing to eat or drink for the rest of the day.

“Wait for God to bring you food,” the guards scoffed.

The priests waited, and God brought them food.

For two days, the two priests were given nothing to eat. On the third, they received a visit from one of the monks. Brother Xavier Suen brought three loaves of northern Chinese bread, one for each of the priests, who joyfully compared the bringing of the bread to the Old Testament’s miracle when God ordered Habacuc to take his bread and boiled pottage to Daniel, who was imprisoned in the lions’ den. The three priests, ensnared in a Red dragon’s den, found comfort in their own miracle.

For eight days, Father Yves remained tied. For twelve days, Father Vincentius was bound until finally freed by a guard who couldn’t resist a verbal jab.

“See, the Master of the Sky cannot untie you, but I have the power,” he said to the priest.

“You would not have done so, if the Master of the Sky had not given you the right inspiration,” Father Vincentius answered.

Furious, the guard clenched his fists and pounded Father Vincentius, all over his head and his body. With the harsh treatment, Father Vincentius’ tuberculosis soon reactivated. To treat his illness, prison authorities forced him to sit in the sun, leaning against a wall, during the daily outdoor exercise, but it only exacerbated his condition. Then back inside his cell, he was exposed to the dank air, prompting his health to deteriorate rapidly. His feet and legs swelled until the skin cracked open. The raw flesh became inflamed and infected, oozing puss and blood. Boils popped up and erupted on his wrists.

But he never complained. And he never asked for medicine.

“It is not a serious matter. Never mind,” he said when others requested treatment for him.

In the beginning of August 1951, Father Vincentius could no longer walk out of the cell on his own. When he had to relieve himself in the cellblock’s latrine or attend a political study (brainwashing) session outside his cell, he had to be carried out. Then, in the evening of August 5, a Sunday, he could no longer stand. To eat, unthinkable. Control over his bowels, impossible. Everything emptied onto his cot. Guards transferred him to a smaller cell, and ordered Father Albertus to assist him.

The next morning, August 6, after much coaxing from Father Albertus, Father Vincentius sipped down a bowl of broth. In the afternoon, he nibbled at two spoons of boiled rice and refused anymore. He grew aggravated. Known as one of the most patient and loving monks of Our Lady of Joy, never before had he displayed any aggravation. He began to babble. At midnight, in a feverish delirium, he banged his two feet on the floor without stopping.

A guard stormed down the hallway from the prison block’s control center to the priests’ cell door.

“Why don’t you be quiet and go to sleep at such time! Stop fooling around!” he hollered.

“Vincentius Shi is going to die,” Father Albertus said.

The guard ran down the hall to notify his supervisor, Officer Pai. He rushed to Father Vincentius’ cell with a doctor, who gave the priest an injection, then left briefly, but soon returned carrying a bowl of water, with grass floating in it. He held it up to Father Vincentius’ lips, slowly poured the liquid into his mouth, and the priest soon calmed down.

When Father Albertus saw that Father Vincentius had drifted to sleep, he curled up in a corner away from the dying priest, in order to get some sleep himself.

Dawn, August 7. It was a Tuesday. Rain poured outside. Father Albertus awoke, rose and touched Father Vincentius. Dead cold. Father Albertus gave him absolution, then burst into tears, furious at himself for being selfish and falling asleep, furious at himself for missing Father Vincentius’ last words, his last breath. He wept as he washed the body of Father Vincentius, and clothed the dead man in his cleanest dirty rags.

“I would die for this monastery,” Father Vincentius had repeatedly told his fellow monks before his arrest.

“We will die with you,” they had always responded.

But, when he died, he died alone.

Father Albertus walked to the cell door and shouted for a guard, “Baogao!” (Report!)

Officer Pai immediately telegrammed the San Ho Siang village officer, who contacted the monks around 1 in the afternoon, and simply told them, “Vincentius Shi has died in prison. You may claim his body for burial.”

Immediately, they left to retrieve their superior’s body, or else Father Vincentius would be buried without thought, without rite, without delay. By 5 p.m., the five pall bearers, with a stretcher, arrived in Tien Huei Chun. With the prison still more than 12 miles away, they arrived as the sun was setting, just in time to complete the necessary paperwork. As they waited at the entrance of the Public Security Bureau, two trusties – worker prisoners – brought out the corpse, and the monks received the body of their superior and laid it on the stretcher.

A pagan, who had been a cellmate of Father Vincentius, whispered to the monks, “I never heard any murmur from his lips. When the Reds urged him to deny God, he only answered, ‘I cannot.’ How touching it was to see him on his knees in prayer. He is a saint.”

With his lifeless, battered body atop the stretcher carried ceremoniously by the mourners, Father Vincentius arrived home a final time at 2 in the morning.

In preparation for burial, the monks carefully removed the rags that covered the body of their beloved superior. They found open wounds from his head to his heels, evidence that he had been beaten repeatedly, barbarically. Several of the younger monks reverently snipped off locks of his hair, to be saved as relics of the holy man.

As the morning sun rose on a beautiful day, August 8, 1951, brave Catholics began arriving at the monastery to pay a final homage to Father Vincentius. Mourners chanted the Office of the Dead and offered prayers until 6 p.m., when the funeral – the funeral of a martyr – took place. Presiding over the Mass was Bishop Henri-Marie-Ernest-Désiré Pinault (Society of Foreign Missions of Paris), who had replaced Bishop Jacques-Victor-Marius Rouchouse upon his death on December 20, 1948.

“Father Vincentius Shi, a Trappist, was a true martyr of the Faith,” Bishop Pinault proclaimed. “We, his brethren, are truly happy to witness this noble gesture as an inspiration from the Holy Ghost. We feel that we enjoy more and more of the blessings from God, since we entrust to the intercession of our dear martyr. And we hope that the good Lord give to the Church the joy of recognizing a canonized saint in the person of our Father Vincentius, who would be the first saint of the Trappists in China.”

The proto-martyr of Our Lady of Joy, Father Vincentius was laid for his eternal rest in an embankment in the midst of the monastery’s vegetable garden. Born in 1904, in Shihchiachuang, he entered the Trappist abbey of Our Lady of Consolation on December 8, 1926, was ordained on May 23, 1937, subsequently transferred to the abbey’s daughter monastery Our Lady of Joy, then led the refugee monks to their refuge in Szechwan province. His monks considered him a holy man, affectionate, humble, patient, generous, with a devotion to Our Lady and the rosary.

Not long after the funeral of Father Vincentius, Father Yves You was released from prison; however, Father Albertus Wei remained in custody and continued to be tortured. One time, he was suspended for six consecutive days and nights by the wrists, which had been tied behind his back. He weakened, sickened. Then, On November 27, 1951, Father Albertus’ body, covered in open, oozing wounds, was given to the monks. Not wanting another martyr to die in their prison, the Communists contacted the monks and tossed out Father Albertus. Tall, several inches over 6 feet, his discolored body, skeletal, lay crumbled on a black board. His face: gray, pale, full of puss and blood. He was nearly dead, so nearly dead, but he clung on, until he breathed his last 20 days later.

As a monk, he had always been quiet. During prayers in the chapel, he accompanied the singing with his harmonium, and his beautiful voice always rose above the others. Tortured in his soul and in his mind that he did not accompany Father Vincentius during his last moments of life, before his own death, Father Albertus wrote a letter, soaked with tears, to his confreres.

“I am really sorry and regret to have fallen asleep and not watched Father Vincentius dying,” he confessed.

After his death, the remaining two priests and handful of brothers were evicted from the monastery, scattering the Community to the bitter winds. The Communists finally seized complete control over the property in Szechwan, following the burial of Our Lady of Joy’s two martyrs: Father Vincentius Shi and Father Albertus Wei.

Father Vincentius was not the only one in his family to die a martyr. Two years earlier, his nephew, Father Seraphinus Shi, a monk of Our Lady of Consolation, was executed, along with five other monks, on January 28, 1948, near the bloody end of the Death March. Their bodies, dumped in a sewage ditch, were later retrieved by the Faithful, who, for two years, hid the remains until they could be delivered to Father Macarius Fu, who carried the bones of the martyrs, in an inconspicuous piece of luggage, from the Mongolian mountains to the Dairy in Peking, in April 1950.

Father Jean-Marie Struyven dreamed of having the six martyrs laid to rest in the Catholic Cemetery of Chala, but he had no way to do it, so he elicited the help of Parisian Lazarist Father Robert Cartier (Congregation of the Mission), rector of the Grand Seminary of Chala.

Father Cartier obtained permission from Father Li-Juan Wu, the vicar general and head of the Peking diocese, then, again, visited the Dairy, where he strapped upon his bicycle rack that inconspicuous piece of luggage containing the remains, asked for a blessing from Father Jean-Marie, then pedaled off.

With a deliberate careless air and dressed in his Mao “costume,” he bicycled over the streets from the northeast corner of Peking, headed for the city’s Hsi Chih Men (West Straight Gate). At the crossroads just before the gate, a policeman stopped the flow of traffic. Father Cartier remained on his bicycle, nonchalantly placed his foot upon the curb and waited for the go-ahead, but noticed that the policeman focused his eyes on him, just as a Chinese man passed, staring and laughing.

“Ah! Russian comrade!” the Chinese man greeted.

Smiling back, Father Cartier nodded his head.

A smile also crossed the policeman’s face, and he permitted the flow of traffic.

With a wave of his hand, as a sign of gratitude to the traffic officer, Cartier pedaled toward Hsi Chih Men, where he hopped off and crossed through on foot, pushing his bike, with the box still strapped on the rack. He headed for Chala, an estate that housed the Provincial House of the Lazarist Mission, the College of the Marists Brothers and also the Cemetery of Chala. Its history stretched back to the death of the Italian Jesuit Father Matteo Ricci (1552-1610, Society of Jesus), when, in 1610, Emperor Wan Li sectioned off a portion of the Imperial Estates for the cemetery where Ricci would be entombed, with a marble tombstone presented by the emperor.

At Chala, Father Cartier placed the box in the hands of one of the Marist brothers, then offered a thanksgiving for mission completed.

It was a great occasion when the solemn Mass was celebrated in the church adjoining the cemetery, and was the first time in a Catholic ceremony in the Communist-run People’s Republic of China that the religious wore during a church service the uniform of blue cotton Communist workers. Attendees included Father Harold W. Rigney (Society of the Divine Word), rector of Fu Jen, the Catholic University, several high-ranking ecclesiastics and several representatives from the embassies of France, Belgium and the Netherlands, as many European missionaries had been fatally victimized by Communists.

During the funeral procession, as the survivor priests from Our Lady of Consolation carried the three small caskets through the crowd, the Faithful surged forward to touch their medals and rosaries to the coffins, in a silent acknowledgement that the men died as martyrs. When the bodies had been deposited in the single, vaulted sepulcher to be shared by all six, a song of triumph rose.

It had taken two years, but the journey finally ended in the spring of 1950, for the six martyrs: Father Chrysostomus Chang, Brother Eligius Hsu, Brother Damianus Hwang, Brother Joannes Maria Miao, Brother Alexius Liu and Father Seraphinus Shi.

On the tombstone, the inscription was simple, in Latin and Chinese: six religious shot january 28, 1948.

And as the persecution of the dead ended, the persecution of the living continued.

In 1949, when the Communists had taken control of China, they intended to control every aspect of life in China, including the Roman Catholic Church, especially the Roman Catholic Church. Viewed not only as an imperialist institution, but it was also viewed as an obstacle to the Communist atheistic society. It had to be destroyed. Not long after the declaration of the People’s Republic of China, Communist workers in Peking were already handing out leaflets, in 1949, promoting a separatist movement for the Catholic Church in China that would break away from the Vatican and the Pope.

In Peking, on January 17, 1951, dozens of Chinese priests, three prelates and several members of the laity were ordered to attend a conference. Even Red regime bigwig En-Lai Chou appeared – five hours late – and delivered a two-hour speech in which he spoke about the “good, bearded fathers,” the European priests who dedicated themselves to the Chinese. However, he also condemned the European “imperialists” who must be rejected. But the big announcement of the evening was the creation of the Religious Affairs Bureau, the tentacle of the People’s Government that would regulate, oversee and control all religious activities, all religious persons and all religious houses, all of which would be required to be registered with and approved by the bureau.

Within a few weeks, Father Jean-Marie received information regarding the law on registration of associations that had ties to foreign entities. With certainty, he determined that it would apply to the Dairy and that it was meant to be a war machine against the Church. He decided to resign immediately from his position of authority in the Community. But because the monks were in the midst of their yearly spiritual retreat, he waited to make his announcement during his closing sermon.

Upon his resignation – effective immediately – as the director of the Dairy and as the representative of Our Lady of Consolation, he appointed his successor, a monk whom he described as having the prudence of a snake and the simplicity of a dove. It was 31-year-old Father Benedictus Wang, the first among the Community of survivors to be ordained. He was from a family of rich farmers, who had been destroyed by the Communists.

Father Jean-Marie also decided it would be best for the Community if he were to extract himself physically from the Dairy and move into the local Jesuit house. As required by law to register one’s residence, he went to the local police station to file his change of address. He also went to the People’s Government office to register the Dairy’s transfer of title on behalf of the Chinese religious, who had accompanied him.

The official behind the counter was very happy.

“It is glorious for you and for China to be rid of the European,” he told the Chinese monks.

Around that time, the Religious Affairs Bureau started flexing its muscles, trying to strong-arm the native Chinese Roman Catholics to abandon the Pope and join the regime’s schismatic version of the one, holy, apostolic, Catholic Church.

But the Faithful would not comply.

It didn’t take long for the Religious Affairs Bureau to engage in open warfare with the Church. In the regime’s newspapers each day, propagandists published editorials and cartoons attacking the Church. Communists argued that the Movement was only to rid the Roman Catholic Church in China of foreign political imperialism, and those who refused to support the independence-from-imperialists Movement would be considered traitors, running dogs of the imperialists, allied with foreign enemies.

In each of the city’s parishes, the Communists imposed a reform committee, composed of the dregs of Christians. The main churches in the city were to display portraits of the great Communist leaders, such as Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Tse-Tung Mao, with bright red flags. Each Sunday, sermons were to end with a short verse in honor their Communist heroes.

China’s bishops sought guidance. To leave, or to remain? Archbishop Antonio Riberi recounted to the Faithful his meeting in 1949 with Pope Pius XII, a staunch anti-Communist who kept a steady eye on his understandably skittish flock in China.

“Holy Father, Should we leave, or stay and be interned under the Communist regime?” Archbishop Riberi asked.

“Bonus Pastor dat vitam pro ovibus; mercenarius autem fugit,” Pope Pius XII answered, referring to the Gospel of St. John, that the good shepherd gives his life for his sheep, but a hired servant flees.

“Holy Father, if during the internment necessitating a long period of inactivity, an opportunity arises to move elsewhere, might we then leave?”

“Eritis mihi testes,” the Pope counseled. You shall be my witnesses.

“But if we were interned not only outside our mission but outside the country, for instance in Siberia, what then?”

“Eritis mihi testes,” the Pope repeated. You shall be my witnesses.

Archbishop Antonio Riberi

It was clear. Archbishop Riberi dug in his heels and stayed. As a result, he was targeted and attacked. In the April 24, 1951 edition of the Peking People’s Daily, the editorial called for his expulsion. In the May 25, 1951 edition of the Peking People’s Daily, an editorial attacked him for sabotaging the Three-Self Reform Movement. On June 26, 1951, he was placed under house arrest and was confined – with round-the-clock surveillance – to his residence in Nanking.

Then on September 8, 1951, the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Archbishop Riberi was escorted to the border and forced to walk across Lo Wu Bridge to Hong Kong, after being banished from China. That was when the crack in diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the Communist regime officially broke wide open.

For the Trappists, the pressure never ended. Even though Father Jean-Marie had disassociated himself from the survivors, the commissioner of Peking’s No. 3 District paid a visit to the Dairy and demanded that the Chinese monks accuse him.

“You have to accuse the European,” the commissioner ordered.

“Oh, no. En-Lai Chou, himself, has acknowledged that there are European who are not imperialists,” Father Theophanes An said, referring to En-Lai Chou’s January 17 speech in which he spoke about the “good bearded fathers.”

“All Europeans are imperialists. We must accuse,” the commissioner said.

“Kill us, but we will never accuse a superior,” Father Theophanes said, standing up in defiance. “We will never accuse!”

Furious, the commissioner screamed threats, but soon controlled his temper.

“Your brain is not yet sufficiently washed. Here are your exercise books for re-education. I shall return,” he said.

With courtesy, Father Theophanes escorted the commissioner to the door.

Not long after, the monks met secretly with Father Jean-Marie. He advised Father Benedictus and Father Theophanes to accuse him of simple crimes, which could not hurt him, yet might help alleviate the pressure exerted from the commissioner. For example, they could accuse him of serving poor quality food, of making the monks work too hard with too little sleep.

No. They refused.

“We would lose face,” Father Benedictus said.

When the commissioner returned, the response was the same. There would be no accusations.

Father Jean-Marie felt the noose tighten around his own neck, as police restricted his activities until he could do nothing, go nowhere. The police busted into his room in the Jesuit house, while he was sleeping in bed, and they forced him to make spontaneous confessions. In one day, he had to make two.

Several times, police asked, “You have no job, no business here. Why do you stay in China, except to sabotage the work undertaken by the People’s Government?”

In Peking, on July 21, 1951, Father Jean-Marie signed his application for voluntary departure.

A few days later, on July 24, enjoying a very rare occasion of merriment, a group of seven or eight monks and Peking missionaries – all labeled by the Communists as serious criminals – took a trip to the Summer Palace, the former residence of the emperor. They had a great time, filled with lots of joy and laughter.

But the next day, July 25, an estimated 3,000 security police officers – armed with Thompson submachine guns – conducted citywide raids that lasted until the early morning hours of July 26. Specifically targeting Catholics, the Communists arrested 14 Catholic priests and 18 laymen in Peking, both Chinese and foreign, but mostly foreigners. One was Father Harold W. Rigney, who had attended the funeral of the six Consolation martyrs in Chala. The priests were incarcerated, interrogated, tortured, forced to undergo brainwashing. Of Peking’s 21 churches, 15 were sealed. The remainder of the 40-or-so foreign priests in Peking were placed under house arrest in their residences. Chinese priests were forced to attend daily brainwashing meetings that lasted at least three hours.

Father Jean-Marie was able to stay in Peking for almost two more years. But finally, in mid-February 1953, he was informed of his expulsion. Before his departure, he met a final time with Father Wu, the vicar general of Peking.

“Speak well of us to Rome, that we may have been far, perhaps too far, but we tried to save what could be saved, and that we remained faithful to the Holy Seat,” Father Wu said.

Then, on the day of his departure, Father Jean-Marie went to visit the Community one last time. Looking around, he saw evidence everywhere in the Dairy that he had accomplished what Archbishop Riberi had asked him to accomplish. There were 43 religious, 15 of them priests, Chinese priests. Father Benedictus escorted him, up to the maritime customs. They said their final farewells. With a heavy heart, he left his dear friends behind in China, where he had spent most of his adult life, where he had made many close friendships. One last good bye, and he headed for his homeland of Belgium.

The next year, on March 3, 1954, Ash Wednesday, in a public sermon, Father Benedictus called for loyalty to the Vatican, denouncing the Three-Self Reform Movement. His sermon was dangerous. It was brave. With his statements, he was publicly declaring himself a counterrevolutionary – an enemy of the Communists, an enemy of the People’s Government.

The following Sunday, March 7, 1954, the first Sunday of Lent, the Communists confiscated the Dairy. They arrested all 15 priests. After six months of suffering near-daily interrogations and torture, in September 1954, the incarcerated Trappist priests were condemned to laogai – reform by labor, most sentenced to 20 years.

When the priest-monks had been arrested, the brother-monks had been forced to remain at the Dairy and labor for the Communists, who had inserted their own workers onto the site to learn how to do the work, themselves, so they could take over the responsibilities. In October 1954, those remaining monks of the Community were forced to leave the Dairy. Some of the brothers were imprisoned. Others were sent to labor camps. All were subjected to brainwashing. Some were released and found work in the villages where their families lived. Most all were kept on a list to be watched and monitored.

The Community, completely dispersed.

Communication between the Chinese monks and their European confreres was nearly impossible. One of the last bits of information to make its way out was noted in the January 1958 entry in European abbey’s General House Register.

Brother Hilarius Shen

“Our abbeys have received the notice of death of our dear Brother Hilarius Shen. So attached to ‘The Rule,’ he would never leave Our Lady of Joy, near Chengtingfu. At the time of the arrival of the Reds, he was walking in the streets dressed in the brown habit of the lay brother, with a large crucifix on his chest. He even wore a hat with this inscription: valiant soldier of christ. They took him for a madman. The crazy madness of the cross.”

After that, the Bamboo Curtain descended upon the people of China.

Then, the Great Silence.

After 12 years, in January 1970, an issue of the Reader’s Digest published “Christmas Mass of Father Hsia,” the first written account by Jean Pasqualini (Ruo-Wang Bao) of the fate of the monks who remained in China.

The first two paragraphs:

“His name was Hsia, and if by chance he is still alive, he should be released about now from a Chinese prison camp south of Peking. That was where I last saw him, at the end of 1961. But in all the years since, whenever it is Christmas, he has loomed up in my memory, a frail, seamy-faced old Chinese with unconquered eyes. Once again I see him standing serenely in that freezing wind, holding wafer and wine, and declaring his oneness with God – all the while knowing that he could be shot for what he was doing,” Pasqualini wrote.

“Nobody was very happy about him. For one thing, he looked so old and feeble that it didn’t seem possible he could do his share of the work. But the real trouble was that he had been a Trappist monk, and was always talking about how God would help us if only we didn’t lose faith. Most of us had lost our faith a long time before. The Communists saw to that. Religion had been banished from the People’s Republic as an opiate and superstition, and severe punishment was decreed for anyone persisting in the belief that there could be a power higher than Mao Tse-Tung. Christians especially were persecuted, for they compounded their sin by worshiping the ‘imperialists’ God.”

The account was the first since the Great Silence fell upon China, but it wasn’t possible to identify the priest, who, for his protection, had been given a pseudonym in the short piece.

However, in 1973, Pasqualini’s book, “Prisoner of Mao,” was published. In it, he mentioned more details about the priest who was in the Ching Ho labor camp with him in 1961.

“Father Peter Hsia was a Trappist monk from Yangkiaping, a small, frail, sunburned man in his late 60s with prominent, bushy eyebrows and only a few wisps of white hair on his head,” Pasqualini wrote.

Then the monks knew. From that brief description – Yangkiaping, the bushy eyebrows – it was unmistakable. It was Father Benedictus-Josephus Labre Hou, one of the last survivors of the Death March, a witness of the brutality of the Communists, a witness of the glory of God.

Eritis mihi testes – You shall be my witnesses.

As Pope Pius XII had requested, Father Benedictus-Josephus Labre Hou had obeyed.

POSTSCRIPT I: This tale – perhaps, one of the most well-known, unknown stories of martyrdom in Communist China – is a tale told from the grave, a reconstruction from written accounts by witnesses, survivors and hearsay. At times, information from one source conflicted with information from one or more sources; at such times, a choice was made, based on logical determination. Facts were pulled from the following consulted works:

China Missionary Bulletin, published by the Committee of Catholic Missionaries

“Christmas Mass of Father Hsia,” by Jean Pasqualini

“The History of Our Lady of Consolation,” by Father Stanislaus Jen, Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (OSCO)

“The History of Our Lady of Joy,” by Father Stanislaus Jen, OCSO

“Les Martyrs de N. D. de Consolation et de N. D. de Liesse: Témoins Cisterciens de Notre Temps,” by Irénée Henriot and Joseph Dong

“Los Monjes Blancos,” by Father Eusebio Arnaiz Alvarez, Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (CSsR)

“Max Springweiler: Pioneer Aviator in China,” by Max Springweiler, translation by Larry D. Sall, PhD

“Monaci nella Tormenta: La Passio dei monaci trappisti di Yan-Kia-Ping e di Liesse testimony della fede nella Cina di Mao-Tze-Tung,” by Father Paolino Beltrame Quattrocchi, OCSO

“Prisoner of Mao,” by Ruo-Wang Bao (Jean Pasqualini) and Rudolph Chelminski.

“Regulations of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance,” published by the General Chapter of 1926

“Stars in the Sky,” by Father Patrick J. Scanlan, OCSO

“Trappists, the Reds and You,” by Father M. Raymond Flanagan, OCSO

“Vincent and Albert: Martyrs of Joy,” by Brother Theophane Young, OCSO

POSTSCRIPT II: I need to thank Father Bernard Johnson (Abbey of New Clairvaux, California) and Brother Theophane Young (Our Lady of Joy, Lantao) for – very patiently – assisting me and answering my many, many, many questions. I need to thank especially Brother Theophane, who interviewed for me several times three of the very few surviving refugee monks: Father Benedictus Chao, Father Bernardus Chao and Father Maurus Pei.

ENDNOTE: All Chinese names have been written in a manner to avoid confusion and to remain consistent with the English standard of writing proper names: given name first, family name last. In Chinese, names are traditionally written with family name first, given name last.

Theresa Marie Moreau can be reached at TMMoreau@yahoo.com.

33 Martyrs of Yang Kia Ping

2010-10-06T14:14:00.000-07:00

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On June 26, 2011, "They Died in China" won top Los Angeles Press Club Journalism Award in the News Feature Category

Judge's comment: "I was drawn into this in-depth series of stories from the opening sentence and couldn't put it down until I had read every word of every story. That, to me, represents quality writing and reporting, which are hallmarks of exceptional feature writing."

They Died in China:

33 Martyrs
.....of Yang Kia Ping

by Theresa Marie Moreau

First published in The Remnant Newspaper, September and October 2010

The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.
.............................– Tertullian, from the “Apologeticus”

Father Chrysostomus Chang plumbed the depths of his human will for a supernatural strength. With only a few minutes remaining of his life in the material world, he lifted his thoughts to the spiritual. Through screams from the mob, he addressed his confreres at his side one last time, to prepare them not for death, but for life, everlasting life.

“We’re going to die for God. Let us lift our hearts one more time, in offering our total beings,” he said.

Helpless, the six Trappist monks stood handcuffed and chained on a makeshift platform, targets of a frenzied hatred that surged toward them. The blood-encrusted, lice-infested men, wearing rags caked in their own filth, had nowhere to run, no one to help them. After six months of mind-bending interrogations and body-rending torture, it was over. It was all over.

The verdict had just been read by a Chinese Communist officer: Death. To be carried out immediately.

Hundreds of crazed peasants, with fists raised, with contorted faces, with spit-covered lips, screamed rehearsed slogans of approval for the approaching slaughter. Executioners – reliable Party henchmen – rushed to ready their rifles to exterminate the Roman Catholic monks, believers in the superstitious cult, lovers of the God on the Cross imported from the Imperialist West.

And so it happened on January 28, 1948, in the dead of winter in Pan Pu Tsun, an unmapped village, a frigid heathen hell in the Mongolian mountains, somewhere in the frost-covered north of the Republic of China.

Just over the ridge from the pandemonium staged by the soulless Chinese Communists – believers in the materialistic cult, lovers of the god of death and destruction – lay the charred ruins of Our Lady of Consolation, the once-majestic abbey the monks had called home.

Jostled in the madness, the monks fell to their knees. With their swollen hands tied and chained behind their backs, they couldn’t even cross themselves – In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost – a final time.

The death squad – Communist soldiers at the ready – loaded their rifles with fresh rounds of ammo.

Shots rang out. One, then the next, followed by the next, the monks collapsed upon the blood-splashed, frozen ground. Their lifeless bodies, dragged to a nearby sewage ditch and dumped into a heap, one on top of the other. Alerted by the shots, wild dogs, roaming the village’s dirt roads, scavenging for scraps, hurried over to the bodies to investigate. Sniffing, they lapped up the warm blood, steaming in the icy air.

It was all over. Our Lady of Consolation was no more.

The tragic tale of Our Lady of Consolation began 64 years earlier on June 16, 1883. On that glorious day, as the hot summer wind from the Gobi Desert carried its golden dust eastward, and the cicada nymphs emerged reborn, buzzing in celebration of their emergence into new life from their old shell of death, Father Ephrem Seignol, a Trappist monk stood on a ledge, in the shadow of West Soul Mountain. Atop a ridge nearly 10,000 feet high, that much closer to God, he glimpsed for the first time at the valley of Yang Kia Ping (translation: Yang Family Land). Before his eyes lay the birthplace of the Trappist Community in China.

With him, Father Ephrem brought little else except his dreams, his duties of state, God’s will and the name of the future abbey. Before he had departed from his priory in Tamie, France, for China, from the West for the East, from the Occident for the Orient, he visited his close friend Father John Bosco, in Turin, Italy. The future saint suggested that the abbey be christened with the same name as the chapel in which they were sitting: Our Lady of Consolation. And so it would be.

The Trappists had answered a call from Roman Catholics in the village of Fan Shan. Desperate for Mass and the sacraments on a regular basis, the Chinese natives had enticed the monks with an offer to sell to the religious order an immense valley of rocky, untilled, virgin land in Chahar province (now Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Hebei province).

Yang Kia Ping, approximately 60 square miles in size, about 75 miles – as the Mongolian ring-necked pheasant flies – northwest of Peking (old form of Beijing), the northern capital of what was at that time Imperial China, where Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi (old form of Cixi) ruled from the Inner Palace of the Forbidden City.

Travel to the site of the future abbey was measured in days, not hours.

Back in 1883, when Father Ephrem arrived in the valley, the Imperial Peking-Kalgan Railway didn’t exist. Construction wouldn’t even begin until 1905, with its completion in October 1909. The fastest, smoothest form of travel consisted of jostling atop a mule, along narrow dirtways through the fields and plains. To reach the stony plateau in the Taihang Mountains in Huailai County, a traveler had to be on alert through the heavily wooded areas, on the lookout for bandits and bears. Along the death-defying paths, one had to rely on a trustworthy mule that tested the rock-strewn trails with its hoof before putting its weight down, hugging close to towers of sheer rock reaching skyward to avoid falling straight down the ravine on the other side.

To form a Trappist religious Community from a valley of rocks seemed intimidating, but not impossible. With religious recruits from Europe and from the local villages, despite a slow start, eventually, on those rocks, they built their church, Our Lady of Consolation, an impressive replica of the architectural beauty at Mount St. Bernard Abbey. Pilgrims arriving for the first time and looking down upon the abbey from any ridge high in the surrounding mountains, saw a Community so large inside its enclosure, it appeared like any village in the hills. The church, designed by Belgian Scheut missionary Father Alphonse de Moerloose (Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary), was encircled by several single-story buildings and three courtyards. A vegetable garden sprouted up in the middle of the valley, along with its blossoming fruit trees and, of course, a luscious vineyard, where Brother Ireneus Wang, the self-taught viticulturist, tenderly coaxed the grapes, harvested for the Mass wine.

From the Chinese countryside, and even from the highly cultured, international port city of Shanghai, many boys and men had felt the call to the Trappist austere way of life, with its silence and solitude, prayer and penance. The abbey had been blessed with vocations: oblates, postulants and novices. So many joined the Community, that Pope Pius XI, in his 1926 encyclical “Rerum Ecclesiae,” lauded the monks for their exceptional work in the missions and of winning vocations by bringing pagans to the Church. Two years later, on April 29, 1928, the abbey opened a daughterhouse, Our Lady of Joy, with 95 Community members, about 3 miles from Chengtingfu (old form of Zhengding), in the province of Hopei (old form of Hebei).

By the time Christmas 1936 rolled around, Our Lady of Consolation was at its height, with the Community numbering around 120 monks, mostly Chinese natives, who had attended Mass in the abbey’s chapel built for the faithful from the surrounding villages. The first, built in 1909, at Gate No. 2, marked the entrance and exit in the second enclosure wall. A larger chapel was built in 1934, at Gate No. 1, during the construction of the third, outermost wall, which stood 12 feet high and spanned more than 2 miles. Along its western partition, the wall was dotted with loopholes, narrow slits that were never used for its intended purpose – rifles, but instead as peepholes to peer out at the ever-flowing Pei Ho river.

Even though majestic, the abbey reflected the austere nature of any cloister of Trappists, the common name for the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, an offshoot of the Order of St. Benedict. The new order, established in 1664 at the Abbey of La Trappe, in France, aimed to follow more closely the literal translation of “The Rule of St. Benedict” and focused on the penitential aspect of monasticism: little food, no meat, hard manual labor and strict silence.

Life inside the abbey’s walls, peaceful; however, life outside, complete turmoil.

The Republican Revolution of 1911 ended the centuries-long dynastic rule and made way for the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), which became China’s official government, formed by a number of Republican cliques that had ousted the traditional rulers. Then the Communists in Moscow, the Red capital of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, sent some of its cogs in the Communist International machine to Shanghai, where the Comintern successfully established the Communist Party, in 1921.

Communists successfully penetrated into the Nationalist political organization by clandestine means. But in 1927, the Nationalists – headed by Generalissimo Kai-Shek Chiang – uncovered and ousted its Red contingent, because of its incitement and sadistic fondness of mob violence – especially at the encouragement of its ringleader Tse-Tung Mao. That ejection in 1927 ignited the highly volatile, on-again-off-again Chinese Civil War between the Nationalists and Communists, between Chiang and Mao, which ravaged China for more than two decades.

Also a factor was 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 China’s natural resources of coal, iron, gold and giant forests. Six years later, on July 7, 1937 (referred to 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 the Japanese advanced, the Nationalists withdrew from Peking and northern China. The Japanese could not fill all the holes left by the Nationalists in their retreat, and the areas left vacant and vulnerable were taken over by the Communists – the party opposing the Nationalists.

In October 1937, only a few months after the outbreak of the Second Chinese-Japanese War, the Communists reached Huailai County and the valley of Yang Kia Ping. Our Lady of Consolation found itself between the two forces. Japanese soldiers to the north and the east. To the south and the west, Chinese Communist soldiers.

But a peace existed, tentatively, but it existed.

The Japanese had not been hostile to the abbey; to the contrary, they had been respectful, out of reverence for the spiritual nature of the Community.

So, too, the Communists treated the monks with respect, face to face, but their non-aggressive actions were not sincere. Avowed atheists, Communists consider religion to be one of the evils of the traditional, feudal, “old” world – a declared enemy in Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto,” published in 1848. Also, because the abbey had been established by Europeans, the monks were considered Western invaders, imperialistic enemies of the Chinese Marxists, who disregarded the fact that Marxism was, yet, another European import.

For two years, the Reds, experts at gathering and using information as power, continued their faux friendship, as they secretly reconned intelligence from the Community. When it was learned that the monks had a cache of weapons, the Communists made a move to get their hands on the firearms. Politely, they asked to borrow the guns, claiming they were needed to fight the Japanese. Politely, the monks refused. But, Communists have never liked refusals.

On October 15, 1939, around noon, the oblates – the youngest members of the abbey’s Community – headed outside the enclosure for their usual Sunday walk in the mountains, where they liked to climb sections of the Great Wall. When they reached Gate No. 1, at the third enclosure wall, the young monks-in-training found hundreds of Communist soldiers blocking their exit. Not permitted to leave, the youths notified the porter, who notified more monks, who notified the superior.

It was an official visit, the Reds claimed, as per the orders of Long Ho and Te Chu, the commanders-in-chief of their army. The officers wanted all weapons to be handed over – immediately. Several hours of unsuccessful negotiations passed between the Trappists and the Communists, both inflexible.

At a stalemate, the monks met off to the side, out of earshot of the Reds and discussed what to do. Some believed they should not comply; others felt they should; both wanted to avoid a possible unpleasant circumstance in the future. Finally, a decision was reached. The monks opened the gate and stepped out of the way as the troops entered the compound. The Trappists willingly surrendered all their weapons – all 28 rifles, which French authorities in Peking had sent after the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, so the monks could protect themselves.

But those 28 rifles weren’t good enough. The Communists demanded the monks also hand over what they had hidden in their arsenal. When the monks responded that they didn’t have any weapons secretly stashed, the Communists refused to accept that answer.

They grabbed Father Antonius Fan, the prior, and dragged him out to the orchard, where they drew a rope over his chest and under his arms tied behind his back, then strung him up on a tree. For three hours, he dangled, with his toes just a breath away from touching the ground, until he was cut loose.

At the same time, the Communist henchmen cornered and questioned Brother Alexius Liu. What that short monk lacked in height, he more than made up for in personal strength as he was physically tortured. When that failed to garner information, the Reds tried to scare him into talking.

Shots were fired out in the orchard.

“Do you hear those shots?” they asked him. “Those are the executions of the monks who didn’t want to talk! That’s the road you’re going to march down, if you don’t declare where the rest of the guns are hidden.”

“Even if you kill me, I have nothing more to say! There are no more!” Brother Alexius answered.

More shots fired.

“Do you hear those? That’s to warn you that you can either talk or be shot.”

“I’m not afraid of dying. Kill me, if you want to.”

They ordered him to step before his executioners.

With fear searing through his blood, Brother Alexius shook uncontrollably as he stepped forward. An order was shouted. A shot, fired. A single bullet passed, just grazing the monk’s head.

“Talk now, clearly and without evasion and tricks. Where are the other guns and ammunition hidden?”

“To tell you the truth,” he answered, “according to the dictates of my conscience, and for the well being of the abbey, I will once again tell you that there are no more arms, other than the ones you have already seized. No more!”

Exasperated, the soldiers decided to let him go.

For five days, the Communists searched every inch of the abbey, inside and out, moving furniture, probing cupboards, lifting floorboards, digging in the gardens and excavating the storage caves. After the futile search turned up nothing more, the soldiers withdrew from the abbey on Friday, October 20, apologizing profusely for any trouble they had caused.

However, after that, the Communists, not the abbot, ruled over the Community. The Reds left behind their goons: the kan pu, the cadres, the Party’s unofficial police – the muscle, the enforcers of the dictates of the Communist Party. They were to slowly put the squeeze on the monks. After the rifles, it was food that was demanded. Since the monks had no weapons to protect themselves or their property, they could do nothing as the Reds confidently walked in with empty arms and walked out with armloads of food. Next, the squeals of pigs could be heard as they were slaughtered, then cows. After food, it was money the Reds demanded, then more money, in ever increasing increments.

Completely under the Red thumbs of the Communists, the monks secretly made plans to get out.

On April 4, 1940, the exodus began. In the first group, five oblates sneaked by the cadres and made their way over the mountains to the abbey’s daughterhouse, Our Lady of Joy, in Hopei province, about 190 miles southwest of Peking. In the following months, by dribs and drabs, 25 more members of the Community – including novices, simple professed and young priests – successfully reached the house of refuge. In a final disappearing act, 12 oblates walked all the way to the Marist Brothers residence a few miles outside the walls of Peking.

When the cadres noticed the dwindling numbers in the Community, the two-faced Party goons decided they had to do something. Hiding their true faces behind their smiling faces, the cadres met with the monks, begged forgiveness for their greedy behavior and promised to be nicer and less demanding in the future. For six months, the abbey had no trouble from the Communists, so thinking the Reds had truly changed their ways, it was decided that those members of the Community who had been sent away would be called back home.

Around March 1941, by the time most of the young men had been recalled to the abbey, the Communists pulled back their masks and revealed their true faces when they placed the whole Community under house arrest. Under constant surveillance, every move was watched. Nothing could be done by the monks without permission of the Communists. No one went in; no one went out unless authorized.

At the time, politically, strategically, the Communists were very busy building up their military strength and setting up their own administrative system in northern China, including the areas around the abbey. For, during World War II, the Communists had tricked the Nationalists into a civil-war truce, feigning the two could join forces to fight the Japanese. However, the Reds had no intentions of keeping the truce, but used it as an opportunity to make sure the Nationalists were worn down by the war against the Japanese.

With the end of World War II, on August 15, 1945, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Japanese forces retreated from their positions around the world, thus withdrawing from China. The end of the war also ended the so-called truce between Mao’s Communists and Chiang’s Nationalists. The Nationalists, unable to re-occupy northern China, which had come under control of the Reds, could only stand at strategic points along borders. An all-out civil war between the two ensued in a brutal fight, with Mao chomping down on Chiang, eventually hounding him all the way to Formosa (old Portuguese name of Taiwan).

But the Nationalists weren’t the only targets during the civil war. The Communists also started targeting other enemies: counterrevolutionaries, religious believers and landlords.

The Trappists were all three.

The Communists wanted to destroy the abbey and its Community, but to legitimize their destruction of the abbey, the Communists needed to produce evidence that the monks committed some sort of crime.

In August 1945, during the hottest days of the summer, the Communists began turning up the heat even more. For health reasons, supposedly, a Communist general, a commissioner of the People, and his assistant stopped off at the abbey for a bit of a rest. It was not all that unusual for travelers to lodge for short periods in Yang Kia Ping, what all the locals called Our Lady of Consolation. However, ever wary of the Communists, the abbot, Father Alexis Baillon, assigned Brother Adrianus Wang, the sub-guest master, to keep an eye on the two guests during their stay, which coincided with a burial inside the enclosure.

The general’s assistant attended the funeral and, later, expressed his admiration for the solemnity and beauty of the ceremony, to Brother Adrianus.

“The funeral was so beautiful. At home, we are buried like dogs,” the assistant said, adding, “The general treats me like a dog. If I could, I would try to kill him.”

“Don’t do it here,” Brother Adrianus said.

A few days later, the general went for a little walk, but as soon as he returned, he abruptly left the abbey without any explanation. Weeks later, Communist soldiers arrived at the abbey and arrested Brother Adrianus, claiming that the officer’s assistant had revealed under torture that the monk had suggested the general be assassinated. The Brother’s room was searched, and there soldiers found a notebook with the following entry, a quote from the abbot, Father Alexis: “Pray God to destroy the Communists.”

On the suspicion of plotting the general’s death, soldiers next arrested the abbot, Father Alexis, and Father Maurus Bougon, who had been the guest master during the general’s stay. Also arrested was Father Seraphinus Shi, who willingly took the burden of the crime upon himself, to relieve some of the guilt from Brother Adrianus, whom he believed was too naive to see through the duplicity of the Communists. Devastated and inconsolable for believing that he was the cause of so much trouble, Brother Adrianus, fell to his knees, pounded his chest (Trappist sign language for expressing sorrow) and sobbed uncontrollably, calling himself Judas, for the betrayal he believed that he had committed against the Community.

On October 25, 1945, all arrested were hauled off to Huang An, a village about 20 miles from the abbey, where they were imprisoned in a small room, without furniture, without heat. Father Alexis and Father Maurus had their feet shackled to the floor with irons, all winter long, until March, when the abbey received a notice: Send the mules to fetch the abbot and the other prisoners. On March 17, 1946, all were returned to the abbey and set free except the abbot, Father Alexis, who was ordered to leave China. On May 12, he headed back to France.

On December 1, 1946, an announcement was made in the Chapter Room, where the monks met daily for the reading of a chapter from “The Rule of St. Benedict.” In the absence of a father abbot, Father Michaelus Hsu was to be the superior of the Community.

Intelligent and highly cultured, Father Michaelus had been born in the Tsing-Pu district of Shanghai on March 18, 1901, into a family with an aristocratic background. He was a direct descendant (12^th generation) of Prime Minister Kuang-Chi “Paul” Hsu – a member of Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi’s Imperial Court, guardian and tutor of the sons of the Imperial House and chancellor of the National Institute. After his death in 1633, the prime minister was buried with great honors. But, perhaps, most importantly, he had been converted to the Faith by Father Matteo Ricci (Society of Jesus), an Italian and one of the founding fathers of the Jesuit mission in China.

As for Father Maurus, upon his return from imprisonment, his religious superiors in Europe gave him an ultimatum: Return to France, or minister a parish in China. He chose to remain in China and was appointed a parish priest in Peimong, south of Peking.

As the abbey restructured its hierarchy, the local Communists continued to set up and strategize for the upcoming “struggle” against the monks.

In the “Communist Manifesto,” Karl Marx wrote, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

Marx’s philosophy of the “struggle,” later coined dialectical materialism, can be understood in a formula: Thesis plus antithesis equals synthesis. To make it even simpler and to apply it to the Chinese Communist agenda: Minor enemies pitted against major enemy equals new minor enemies pitted against new major enemy.

The struggle was a form of elimination that – when enacted by Mao and his henchmen – continuously eliminated political enemies – minor and major.

To prepare for the proper political struggle nationally, Communists began establishing neighborhood associations in China’s cities and peasant associations in the villages. The associations held mandatory-attendance political meetings, brainwashing sessions organized to push the Party’s particular struggle against whomever the current political enemy was.

At times, when a particular enemy was to be targeted and “struggled” against, the enemy could be attacked at either a small struggle session (attended by members of a single association) or at a large struggle rally (attended by members of several neighboring associations). Attendance by members, always mandatory. At a large struggle rally, the targets were usually placed on a raised platform, before hundreds and hundreds of members, who screamed rehearsed slogans as cadres walked through the crowds, agitating and inciting acts of rage. Violence – often sadistic and fatal – was encouraged and regarded as legitimate acts of revenge by the oppressed People against their oppressors.

The Trappists of Our Lady of Consolation were considered oppressors. They were also considered major enemies.

In the province of Chahar, there was one Communist official who wanted the abbey 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 Mao, was from a family of landowners (considered oppressors, enemies of the People), and, also like Mao, he renounced his family.

That man was Tui-Shih Li.

The struggle against the abbey began in April 1947, when, at the peasant association meetings in the villages surrounding the Trappist Community, the Communists began agitating the peasants, turning them against the monks. The cadres told the peasants that all the land the monks possessed actually belonged to the People, that the monks were trying to be lords over the peasants, that the monks were the oppressors and that the peasants were the oppressed People.

For two months, the Communists agitated the peasants. Then they struck the abbey.

On July 1, 1947, two monks were tending some livestock on the abbey’s property in Hsing Chuang, about 1 mile north of the enclosure wall, when they were confronted and hauled before a People’s Court, a staged mass struggle meeting orchestrated by the Communists. Charged and declared guilty of oppressing the People, the lay brothers were ordered to hand over some of the abbey’s goats and cows to the People.

The next day, July 2, 1947, the Communists made their big push on the monks.

Two messengers arrived at the abbey and ordered Father Seraphinus Shi and Father Chrysostomus Chang to stand trial before a People’s Court. In Communist-occupied zones, courts of justice did no exist. In its stead was the People's Court, a kangaroo court headed by Party workers, in which the attending mob of People decided the fate of the accused.

Under guard, the monks were marched about 1.5 miles south of the abbey, down to a dry riverbed in the village of Li Chia Wan Tze. Forced onto a platform, the two stood before a gathering of peasants, assembled from many villages in the surrounding areas.

Accused of alleged offenses that had occurred almost 50 years before, the two had to answer to charges that included: During the time of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, foreign troops had oppressed the People of north China and that Our Lady of Consolation had been built with indemnities exacted from the Chinese government by the foreign powers.

Before the Communist takeover in 1949, the Party established itself as a force first in the countryside, where they would occupy villages and use methods to divide the people.

What happened to the Trappists that July 1947, was Karl Marx’s “class struggle” put into action against the members of the Community, who had to answer to allegations that their Community “ancestors” decades earlier had exploited and oppressed the People. When financially or politically necessary, Communists insisted that an “injustice” had to be avenged, no matter how long ago the alleged “crime” had occurred. Even if the accused had died long before, the living descendant would be forced to pay. It was a very convenient, often-used pretext for the Communists to get their hands on property.

The Fou Chou Hui, the Enemy Vengeance Association, was a method used by Communists to encourage the peasants to take revenge against the rich landowners by publicly criticizing them. Violence was encouraged.

“These monks are guilty,” shouted cadres. “Do you agree or disagree?”

“We agree!” the peasants shouted back.

Unexpectedly, a young villager stepped forward and complained that during the time of the Boxer Rebellion, a Christian had killed a goat belonging to his grandfather, then sought refuge in the abbey.

Quickly, the chief judge tabulated the damages: One goat has two baby goats two times a year. After 48 years the total number would be 192 baby goats.

“The will of the People must be fulfilled. For this, the abbey must give property to the People,” the judge ruled. “Are you with us or not?”

“With you!” screamed the peasants, the same peasants who had sought refuge in the abbey in times of danger, had sought food in the abbey in times of famine, had sought relief in the abbey in times of stress. It was those same peasants, who had bestowed the abbey with several memorial tablets, as gifts of appreciation for the years of selfless aid.

Released temporarily, Father Seraphinus and Father Chrysostomus made several trips back and forth from the village to the abbey back to the village to declare whatever goods and property the abbey possessed. Finally, a decision was made. The abbey was to hand over the farm property in Hsing Chuang to the grandson, to make up for the damages allegedly suffered by his grandfather 47 years before. And to the peasants, the abbey would give 50 blankets.

On July 7, the two priests returned to the abbey with a group of men from the village, who were to collect the blankets. Within hours, word had spread from village to village that the peasants of Li Chia Wan Tze were taking all of the abbey’s goods. Afraid of missing out on the loot, villagers rushed to the Yang Kia Ping, en masse. At the stroke of midnight, on July 8, 1947, peasants from an estimated 30 villages gathered outside the wall, pounding on Gate No. 1.

Wakened, the abbey’s porter went to check on all the noise. As soon as he opened the gate, he was beaten, and the peasants with torches rushed onto the property, pushing through the monks who had also wakened and attempted to calm down the mob who ran to the dormitory. The peasants grabbed mattresses right out from under the sick, and emptied the straw from the serge cloth – a rarity in those parts. They snatched quilts, linens, blankets. They ripped down curtains. Anything they could get their hands on, they dragged off.

By 2 a.m., the looting, the madness was over.

Usually, at that time in the morning, the appointed bell ringer would light the passages, open the church doors and awaken the sleeping monks by ringing the dormitory bell for the space of a Miserere. But that morning, it was not necessary. The monks, heartbroken that the peasants had turned on them, had already made their way to the church of Our Lady of Consolation, where they sought consolation with their pre-dawn routine of mental prayer, Canonical Office, the Angelus and private masses.

By morning’s light, around 7 a.m., the roar of the mob, with its shouts and screams heard from a great distance, approached quickly. The monks rushed to the Tabernacle, to rescue and consume the remaining Hosts, before the second wave of looters, armed with the military backup, swarmed through the abbey, demanding and taking more.

The library was destroyed. Valuable leather covers were ripped from the binding of the books by the illiterate peasants who threw up the loose-leaf pages that went flying, destroying a lifetime of work by Father Simon Hsu, the abbey’s talented bookbinder. Some of the villagers dashed into the refectory, where members of the Community were eating, and snatched the napkins and utensils from the monks’ hands. The storerooms were broken into, and the contents – beans, corn, millet, sorghum, lentils, nuts, honey, salt, and cheese made from their goats’ milk – were confiscated, not for the peasants, but for the Communist soldiers. From the tool house, the shoe shop, the blacksmith shop everything ransacked and looted. In the tailor shop, three of the five sewing machines destroyed; the other two carted away for the Communists. In the church, the mob tied up the sacristan, stole his keys and proceeded to carry off the chalices, vestments and other sacred objects. One of the peasants was seen with a priest’s stole tied around his waist.

Once the abbey had been gutted of all material possessions, the Reds turned on the monks and arrested all 74, of which only five were foreigners. The rest were native Chinese. Locked up in the Chapter Room, which no longer had any furniture after the looting, the monks were forced to sleep on the stone floor, under the low-vaulted ceiling. In that same room, many of the men, as postulants had received the holy habit. As novices, many had made their temporary professions.

Father Michaelus, the superior, embraced from the very beginning a tragic ending.

“We will all die together,” he predicted.

For two days and two nights the prisoners waited. Outside the windows, in those mountains of northern China, the buzzing of the cicadas pierced the air, as the resurrected insects emerged from their nymph-shell tombs.

On July 10, the door swung open, and the men were rounded up and herded, two-by-two, through the cloister, through the gardens, through the gates and led to a level field outside the third enclosure wall. On the side of a mountain, hundreds and hundreds of peasants, from about 30 villages, raised their fists, screamed slogans. Banners, splashed with large Chinese characters, snapped in the hot wind from the west. The largest flag, displayed in blood-red: the trial of yang kia ping by all villages.

A struggle rally was about to begin.

Three priests were singled out. Again, Father Seraphinus and Father Chrysostomus, but when officials called for the superior of the abbey, Father Augustinus Faure, a much-loved, old Frenchman, stepped forward to spare the superior, Father Michaelus. The rest of the monks, ordered to stand near the table where the judges sat, baked in the heat. Soldiers, at the command, ripped the habits from some of the monks, stripping them, baring their torsos, to sizzle under the blazing mid-day sun.

Chief judge Chu-Jan Su presided.

Father Seraphinus was called first.

Again, he had to answer to charges, not against himself, but against the abbey. Charges included that the abbey had been responsible for the suppression of the Boxers by foreign powers, that the abbey had received weapons from the French government to use against the People of the region, and that the abbey had hid precious treasures in the hills, to keep them from the People.

Then a new charge was lodged against him. Because he was the cellarer, the person in charge of the farms and buildings, he was accused of usurping the best land in the region and living off the People by keeping for the monks the produce of the fertile acres.

After each accusation, he claimed innocence, for which he was brutally clubbed.

Then Father Chrysostomus was called.

Chu-Jan Su announced, “We have found Seraphinus Shi guilty of crimes against the People. If you do not agree with our verdict and confess them yourself, you are as good as dead. Is it true, yes or no?”

“No! It is not true!” Father Chrysostomus answered.

Torturers at his side were given a signal. They raised their clubs and pounded away on him.

Then Father Augustinus was called. He stepped forward and tried to reason with Chu-Jan Su, but his calm demeanor only infuriated the Communist judge, who ordered that the old priest receive the same treatment as the other two.

After the accusations, after the beatings, Chu-Jan Su announced that the abbey should reimburse the People for any and all losses and damages.

Father Augustinus said, “To give you what you ask, even though guiltless of what you say, 10 Yang Kia Pings would not suffice.”

The Party goons rushed to the old man, clubbing him down for his statement.

The actual superior, Father Michaelus, felt so guilt ridden that the old Frenchman had assumed the position of the superior and had taken the beatings for him, that he shook uncontrollably and had to be held up by monks standing near him, as they were rounded up and led back to the abbey. At first, locked up in the church, they were later moved to the dormitory, where they were watched, beaten and given little to eat.

On the morning of July 23, 1947, the soldiers swung open the doors, rounding up the men, kicking them out of the dormitory. Herded toward the church, the monks – the old and infirm as well as the young and strong – were shoved into the lower choral seats. Red soldiers sat in the choir stalls, where the priests once stood, chanting the Divine Office. Peasants filled the rest of the church.

A desk for the judges had been placed underneath the extinguished sanctuary lamp in the presbytery, where each day the unbloody sacrifice of Calvary had been offered. Flanked by his assistants, the head judge sat in the middle.

It was Tui-Shih Li.

From his seat, he looked at the monks and bit down on the lit cigarette sticking out from between his teeth.

Father Guglielmus Cambourieu, gifted with a very sensitive nature, whispered to his confreres, “We’re all going to die martyrs. Let’s make a general Act of Contrition.”

They were to be tried before another People’s Court.

Again, Father Seraphinus was called first.

The court accused him of traveling from village to village, spying among the peasants to gather information for the Japanese during the Second Chinese-Japanese War that ended with the end of World War II.

Father Seraphinus denied the charge and rejected the accusation as absurd.

With a simple order, Li’s men relentlessly clubbed the monk.

“Show a little mercy! Show a little mercy!” Father Seraphinus cried out.

“Now is not the time for mercy,” Li said, puffing away on his cigarette, surrounded in a cloud of smoke. “Now is the time for revenge.”

Village catechist Maria Chang, from the Yihsien district, was called forward. Abandoned as a child, she had been raised by the Daughters of Charity. Told what was expected of her, she was to be a witness for the prosecution.

“It was not Father Seraphinus Shi who came to our village!” she testified. “It was Father Maurus Bougon. And he did not come to seek information for the Japanese; he came to bring the sacraments to the sick and dying!”

Livid that she went against orders and testified in favor of the accused, Li ordered her tied to a granite pillar and clubbed. Repeatedly, the goons hit her on the head and back.

From the lower choral seats, where the monks sat, a voice cried out.

“It’s inhuman to savagely beat a woman!”

It was Brother Isidorus Ying.

When Maria Chang slumped to the floor, her attackers yanked down a hanging banner and tossed it over her limp body. Then they went over to her defender, Brother Isidorus, grabbed him and beat him as they had beaten the catechist.

Next, Father Chrysostomus was called.

From his seat, Li boasted that he was going to make Father Chrysostomus confess everything. But Li didn’t know who he was dealing with.

As an oblate accepted into the abbey, the young Chrysostomus had been quarrelsome and stubborn, downright unpleasant at times. But as he matured, he harnessed his faults. With his mind and with his will, he persevered to control his weak, contentious human nature, until he changed so much he became highly regarded by the others in the Community as a man of great virtue. That’s who Li was dealing with.

Father Chrysostomus was questioned. Accused. Beaten. But he bore all in silence, with a calm that infuriated Li. The more the monk remained silent, the more the torturers attacked him. He fell to the floor, taking the hits where he lay, when a fat, old, good-natured monk, Brother Paulus Pan, who had taught the young Chrysostomus from the age of 6 to 12, rushed to the priest and crouched down at his side, trying to block the blows with his own body. He was pulled off, thrown out of the way, and the beating of Father Chrysostomus continued.

With a signal from Li, the trial ended.

“These criminals are all guilty! What is your opinion?” he called out to those assembled.

“We agree! We agree!” the peasants responded.

“What is your verdict?” the judges asked the peasants.

“They must die! Hand them over to us! We will take stones and kill them!” they screamed.

“We can only take the People’s decision as our decision, for the Communist government is the People’s Government. But, we raise one question. Do you, People, want all the monks to suffer or only the more responsible?”

“They deserve to die! All of them!” they screamed.

“To avoid a general slaughter, we will ask the governor to take the cause in his own hands, and only those guilty will be punished,” Li concluded.

Immediately, soldiers ordered eight of the monks deemed most guilty over to the presbytery step, where most had prostrated themselves before making their solemn professions years before. One-by-one, they were shackled hand and foot. They and all the others had their black, knee-length scapulars pulled off from over their white-wool religious habits, which were then chopped off at the knees. All belts, rosaries, medals and other precious objects were confiscated. Those with eyeglasses had them taken away. All monks were locked up in the refectory, but later divided into smaller groups and placed in different rooms throughout the abbey. Some were placed in solitary confinement. All were kept under strict guard day and night.

Impatiently, Li waited for the go-ahead for the executions from the officials at Communist district headquarters in Kalgan (old form of Zhangjiakou), the capital city of Chahar province.

During the wait, all the monks were forced to write “confessions,” autobiographies with pages and pages and pages filled with all the minutiae of daily life, excruciating details about family, friends, studies, the religious life, even about the sacred vessels and precious religious objects.

To extract information, Li continued the interrogations, pacing back and forth, chomping down on his cigarettes during the sessions. So furious at times, he foamed at the mouth, ranted, screamed death threats. After each question from Li, his goons beat the monk, no matter how old or how sick. At first, the blows were only on the lower half of the body, but then the torture became so severe, frequently the men lost consciousness. One of the monks, Father Benedictus-Josephus Labre Hou fainted three times during one session.

The torturers also employed different techniques. At one point, Father Michaelus, the superior, was forced on top of the abbey’s mill to push the grindstone, intended to serve as an example to scare and motivate his nephew, Brother Eligius Hsu, who had accompanied his uncle to the abbey in the summer of 1937 and joined the Community a year later. Instead of frightening his nephew, he encouraged him to be strong under torture.

From atop the grist mill next to the cow barn, Father Michaelus yelled to his nephew, “Look, sooner or later I will die. To me, it is of little importance. But you, if you obey the Communists, how will you save your soul?”

Word about Li’s sadistic cruelties endured by the monks made its way to the ears of Tso-Yi Fu, a Nationalist general HQ’d in Peking. So furious was he to hear what the Trappists had endured, that he vowed to march to Yang Kia Ping and liberate the monks of Our Lady of Consolation from the blood-drenched hands of the Communists. He ordered his troops to grab their gear and hop aboard the Imperial Peking-Kalgan Railway train. ASAP.

However, unbeknownst to the Nationalist general, there was least one secret Communist spy working right by his side: General Pao-Shan Ten, Fu's trusted secret code officer. So, Li quickly learned of the planned rescue march and hurriedly made his own plans to evacuate his prisoners to a hideout in the mountains.

During the night of August 12, Li assembled the monks.

“You have been blinded by your religious superiors and by your life behind the cloistered walls,” Li told them. “You should see how life in China has changed under the Communists.”

That night, packs filled with food – mostly for the soldiers – were strapped onto the backs of the monks, many with their hands cuffed behind their backs and their ankles weighed down with chains. The soldiers herded their prisoners outdoors, through Gate No. 1 at the outermost enclosure wall, and toward the mountain trails. Whipped and beaten with sticks like mules, the monks stumbled along, up incredibly dark mountain paths nearly invisible under the waxing crescent moon.

Without rest, the marchers continued until after noon the next day, when they reached Chang Ko Chuang, Li’s immediate destination. The village was a Communist outpost already picked clean by the Reds. The procession veered toward a once-beautiful home, confiscated from a landlord, an enemy of the People. Given to the People, the residence had been trashed by the People. Herded into sectioned-off rooms, the monks collapsed onto the floors, exhausted from too much walking and too little food.

The march had been too much for one man. As soon as the pack had been lifted from the back of Brother Bruno Fu (b. 1868), the 79-year-old fell to the floor, never to rise again. Two days later, on August 15, 1947, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, he should have been celebrating the golden jubilee of his solemn and final vows. Instead, the kindhearted old man lay dead. The proto-martyr of the Trappist monks of Our Lady of Consolation, had been born in Hopei province, part of Ho Kiang Hsien, but the charitable and pious monk would never return to his home; his body was dumped without ceremony in a shallow grave.

After hearing that the abbey had been abandoned by the Communists, the Nationalist general, Tso-Yi Fu, cancelled the mission, abandoned his rescue plans and ordered his troops to turn around.

Li had successfully avoided a showdown. On August 18, he decided to return everyone back to the abbey. Another black night, and the monks marched down the mountain paths toward Yang Kia Ping. By the time the prisoners filed through Gate No 1, slogged toward their cells, two more neared death. By August 20, both were dead. Without ceremony, but inside the enclosure, they were buried.

Brother Philippus Liu (b. 1877), a horticulturist for most of his life, was from the district of Feng Tai Hsien, a little south of Peking in Hopei province.

Brother Clemens Kao (b. 1899), physically handicapped, had been born in Chahar province, in the Yu Chow Hsien district, where many Trappist vocations blossomed.

Within days of the Communists’ return, again, Nationalist General Tso-Yi Fu gave the order to gear up and head out. Destination: abbey. And, again, Li determined his best defense was distance, so he planned another transfer of all prisoners and supplies to a hideout in the mountains that offered more protection.

Soldiers rounded up the prisoners, and those with their arms and legs free were soon restrained with cuffs until those ran out, then piano wire was twisted and knotted around wrists. Packs were strapped onto their backs. In the thick of the night, Li ordered the march to begin, heading to their ultimate destination: the Communist-held village of Mu Chia Chwang, located an estimated 65 miles from the abbey.

August 28, 1947. Under a waning gibbous moon, the Death March began, the final march for many.

The caravan of prisoners left Our Lady of Consolation and headed south. Bent over from the heavy supplies, and with their hands restrained behind their backs, the monks stumbled forward, with the chains around their bleeding ankles clanking along the rough and stony paths. The pace, frantic and frenetic. Rest, forbidden, the soldiers kept the prisoners moving with threats and whips, shouts and sticks.

Soldiers taunted, “You believe in God! If your God exists, why doesn’t He help you? Why doesn’t He get you out of here?”

After a grueling 20-mile march through the night and into the morning, Li halted everyone at Ta Lung Men, in Hopei province, near a branch of the Great Wall. But the stay was only brief before orders were given to get up and get moving. They veered southeast, headed for a breach between two steep mountains.

During the summer months, torrential downpours often arrived unannounced. So, too, during the march, when even the weather seemed against the monks. Sudden, unforgiving rains dropped down like weights. Around noon, as the prisoners and their torturers crossed over a crest, they headed into a freezing deluge that soaked the monks, in their thin summer clothing and cotton shoes.

Brutalized and humiliated, the monks lacked food, they lacked clothing, but there was no lack of beatings from the Reds. Some of the Trappists, so old and so weak, could not walk another step on their own, so along the way, the strongest picked up a few small trees and branches, which they fixed into litters to carry the fallen.

On August 31, they reached the village of Tai Ping Tsun, and the prisoners were herded into pig pens, where they briefly rested in rain-soaked pig dung until forced up and out once again.

Along the way, on the night of September 6, somewhere in the district of La Hsun Hsien, those carrying the litter of Father Guglielmus Cambourieu, slipped and lost their grip. The old priest, originally with the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris, tumbled onto the ground, where he bashed his head against a rock. Although bleeding profusely, his gaping wound went undetected in the black night, until the marchers stopped in the little village of Ma Lai Tsun, high in the mountains of Hopei province. In the dark, last rites were secretly administered, with urgency, and Father Guglielmus (b. 1874) died shortly after. He had been the one who had predicted during the trial in the church that they were going to die martyrs. Without ceremony, he was quickly buried, and the marchers continued. He would never return to his native homeland of Auvergne, France.

By the time the marchers arrived in Teng Chia Yu, on September 8, the monks who carried the litter of Father Stephanus Maury (b. 1886) knew that the priest, originally a French Lazarist with the Congregation of the Mission, didn’t have long to live. At some point he had felt death approaching and signaled that he wanted to make his last confession. In a narrow bend along the path, Father Sebastianus Pian, carrying the right front corner nodded for others to delay on a turn. There, he bent over, listened to the dying man’s final words and pronounced absolution.

Lagging behind, Brother Damianus Hwang finally reached the village. With his arms bound behind his back, he could only crawl forward on his knees. Years earlier, he had suffered frostbite on his feet and, subsequently, walked with great difficulty. After his feet gave out on the march, he fell to his knees and could only drag himself along. The soldiers whipped him, kicked him, punched him, then threw him into a pigsty alongside the pigs.

Rain continued. Wind continued. Without light in their cells, they spent all their hours in the dark. Without heat, only the fire of Christ in their hearts warmed them. Without quilts, frost blanketed them in the early morning. Without water to cleanse their bodies, only lice flowed freely on their flesh. Without solid food, only diarrhea blasted through their bowels, usually where they sat, without permission to relieve themselves properly. Without winter clothing, only their summer clothing, soaked in their own filth, covered them.

All the while, interrogations continued. Li, always biting down on a cigarette between his teeth, paced back and forth under a cloud of silver-gray smoke. Stomping his feet. Slamming down his fist. Screaming. Taunting the glorious rising of the Communist Party and the destruction of the Catholic Church. It all thrilled him.

“Yang Kia Ping has been destroyed to its foundation, and it will never rise again,” he taunted. “Before too long, there will be no more Catholic Church in all of China!”

To prove his point, Li sent Father Theodorus Yuan and Brother Alexius Liu, under a heavy guard, to return to the abbey to see for themselves.

They arrived at dawn, and stood on a ledge, in the shadows of West Soul Mountain. They looked down at Yang Kia Ping, at their former home, Our Lady of Consolation. It had been destroyed. They would later learn that the Reds had not only set the blaze with their own hands, but they had also forced the local peasants to assist in lighting the fires, thus implicating them in the destruction of the abbey. The Reds had also planted land mines around the cloister, to deter anyone from trying to extinguish the flames.

Father Theodorus and Brother Alexius were marched back to their cells, to their chains, and reported back to the others that, indeed, their former home was nothing but smoking ruins. Only the mule stables remained standing, seemingly a visual testament to the stubborn nature of the animal. The rest, rubble amid ashes.

Li had planned to win Father Seraphinus Shi over to his side. It had happened before with others. Others too weak to withstand the emotional, physical and mental torture had succumbed.

But Father Seraphinus was not like the others. He was not like those too weak to withstand the torture. He was strong. His mental strength held him up, held him together. A master orator and rhetorician, a native of the Paoting (old form of Baoding) diocese in Hopei province, he surpassed all in the abbey, even the elegant and much-educated superior, Father Michaelus Hsu. The most brilliant of the brilliant men at the abbey, there had been big plans for Father Seraphinus. He was to be the first, the very first native Chinese abbot.

No, he was most definitely not like the others.

The more he refused Li’s encouragement and enticement of apostasy, the more the Communists pounded away on him, beating him, clubbing him, kicking him without stopping. The more he remained constant in his faith, the more the Communists resented him, loathed him, hated him. With each passing day, the brutality of his torturers increased. His hands were bound behind his back by tying his thumbs together with wire, then his big toes were bound together with wire, and, finally, his legs were pulled behind him so that his toes and thumbs were joined by a short wire, so short that he could only kneel or lie on his side at all times. He remained hogtied for several weeks, and the beatings continued.

“We know that you don’t fear death, but we will beat and torture you continuously so that you will never possess more than half of your life. Thus being half alive and half dead, you will agree with what we say,” the torturers taunted.

When Father Seraphinus returned to his place among the other prisoners after interrogations, he never complained. He merely lay with his body quivering from pain; only, occasionally, a sob would escape.

But Father Seraphinus never gave in.

Father Chrysostomus was kept in solitary confinement at all times in a filth-laden sty while at Teng Chia Yu, alongside the pigs. During interrogations, he was frequently tortured by being suspended from the ceiling. His inner and outer strength seemed supernatural. Like the others, he endured all in silence, but once, during one of the interrogations, he asked for a blanket.

“You don’t think right,” his interrogator answered. “Or if you do, you don’t speak what you think. It is only proper that you should sleep with pigs.”

Never-ending suffering for some, but for others, the suffering ended.

At Teng Chia Yu, Father Alphonsus L’Heureux (b. 1894) had been separated from the others. A missionary with the Society of Jesus, he switched to the Trappist monastery late in life. A French Canadian, born in Coaticook, Quebec, he had once loved intensely a beautiful girl, Denise Dupuis, who had taught him how to folk dance. But he held back his signs of affection, for he knew when it came time to make a decision, he would choose God.

Strong in body and will, when he worked in the fields, he put all his heart and soul into it, and could do the same work in one afternoon that three Chinese men did in two days. Strong in faith and will, as soon as he returned from the fields, without fail, he headed straight to the church for the Stations of the Cross, then kneeled before the altar of the Sacred Heart for contemplation. Every day, he went to the Sacrament of Penance.

With that strength of will, he faced his interrogators and their taunts.

“Ha! If He’s a God who does not care to help you, or one who cannot help you, you can have Him,” guards taunted. “For our part, we don’t believe in God.”

Backed with scholarship of the pre-Vatican II Jesuits, Father Alphonsus refuted vigorously their arguments, for which he was brutally tortured, until he could only lay on the ground, in solitary confinement, barely alive, without a blanket or even a rag to cover his body in the cold. Suffering from dysentery, his feces, like white mucus, encrusted his trousers that were never removed or cleaned. When he lay dying, his hands, bound with steel wire behind his back since the trial on July 23, were finally freed, but the wrists had swelled, nearly unrecognizable with red, gaping wounds that resembled opened, toothless mouths screaming.

On Friday, September 12, the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary, rain poured steadily in the Chinese village of Teng Chia Yu. Autumn, the most beautiful season in the Taihang Mountains, with the explosion of blood red from the Chinese maples dotting the landscape with its blood red on the slopes.

Father Alphonsus called out from his cell.

Close by, in Father Sebastianus Pian’s cell, a young Red soldier, less cruel than the others, heard, but couldn’t understand the priest’s cries.

“That foreigner is calling out. Go and see what he wants,” the soldier told Father Sebastianus, who approached and kneeled at the side of the dying priest.

“I want this,” he said, raising his filthy, wounded right hand and painfully tracing with it the sign of the cross.

Father Alphonsus wanted to make his confession. From his spot on the bare floor, in his soiled trousers, crawling with lice, he whispered his confession, and as he said his Act of Contrition, Father Sebastianus pronounced the absolution.

“Amen,” Father Alphonsus said, himself, then asked for a cup of water. Between sips, he looked up and smiled.

“In a short time, I will go to Heaven,” he said.

“We will meet again in Heaven, then,” Father Sebastianus answered.

“I shall die tomorrow – Mary’s day. I’ll be very happy to die. In Heaven, I shall pray for all of you. Be brave.”

The young, Red soldier approached Father Alphonsus and said, “Old Father, are you still alive?”

“I will die soon. I thank you for all you have done for me. You have been very good to me.”

The next morning, September 13, 1947, the cook brought food for Father Alphonsus. As he opened the door, he called to the priest. But there was no answer. When he touched the cold body, he knew he was dead.

The young, Red soldier, less cruel than the others, approached the monks. In a reverential whisper, he described the priest’s death.

“That man died very peacefully. He looked just like the other man in your figure-10 frame at Yang Kia Ping.”

Instantly, the monks understood the profound meaning. In written Chinese, the character for the number 10 is an upright cross, which is referred to as a figure-10 frame. At Yang Kia Ping, where their abbey stood, the soldier had seen a crucifix.

It was true.

Brother Marcellus Chang, Father Sebastianus Pian and two other monks were ordered to bury the body of Father Alphonsus.

As Brother Marcellus looked down, he saw his dead confrere’s legs were crossed, with his shrunken right foot resting above the left. His hands, with bones sticking out at the wrists, were folded atop his breast. Upon his face, a peaceful, serene beauty.

Looking upon the smiling face, Father Sebastianus thought, He does not look like a corpse, at all.

The monks placed the body of Father Alphonsus upon a stretcher. Lifting the bier, the monks genuflected, praying in their hearts as they walked to a nearby mountain slope, where the reticent gravediggers began their sorrowful task far from the abbey, where they should be celebrating the eternal life with the austere beauty of a Trappist burial.

Back at the abbey, when Father Alphonsus approached the end, he would have been tenderly placed on the floor, atop a serge cloth, under which would have been spread some straw over a cross of blessed ashes, with his confreres praying around him. After the agony, his face, hands and feet would have been washed, then he would have been clothed in his choir dress, with the hood pulled just slightly over his face. Only when his body was placed in its final resting place, without box, would the hood have been pulled down completely.

With shouts and cracks of their whips, the soldiers broke the meditations of the burial party, mid-dig, when the hole was less than a foot deep. Impatient because of the rain, the Reds forced the monks to stop shoveling and to dump Father Alphonsus into his shallow grave, with only a thin covering of loose earth, which quickly washed away.

Father Alphonsus was soon joined by another, Father Emilius Ying (b. 1886). A native of the province of Shantung (old form of Shandong), he had been a rather cantankerous priest, who angered easily, especially against the foreigners, the Western invaders in his beloved China. But when he died in Teng Chia Yu, on September 23, it was said that he died of a broken heart. Despite his enduring strength and health, it proved too much for him that his very torturers were not foreigners, but his fellow Chinese.

Then for five more, the suffering ended at Teng Chia Yu.

Brother Bartholomeus Chin (b. 1893), one of several vocations from the Jesuit mission Sien Hsien, in Hopei province.

Brother Ludovicus Gonzaga Jen (b. 1872), who was from the Suanhwafu diocese.

Brother Hieronymus Li (b. 1873), who was from the district of Yu Chow Hsien, in Chahar province.

Brother Marcus Li (b. 1885), another vocation from Sien Hsien, in Hopei province.

Brother Conradus Ma (b. 1872), born in Peking, who was sickly, old and infirm.

At the announcement of each death, Li could barely contain his glee.

“Wonderful! We have saved one more bullet!” he cheered.

After each death, four monks, escorted by weapon-ready soldiers, carried each body, where they would be forced to dump their confrere in a slightly dug hole, then covered over with a powdering of dirt. At night, the smell of death lured the wolves and wild dogs that unearthed the decaying bodies, tearing off legs and arms, gnawing on the flesh and muscle. What wasn’t devoured was left lying on the ground, visible. Only when the villagers of Teng Chia Yu complained, were the dead reburied, with the mauled remains re-interred in a grave slightly deeper, or just deep enough.

But in the midst of the macabre, at times, there was beauty.

One of the few Europeans from Our Lady of Consolation, Father Aelredus Drost, born in Amsterdam, had been gifted with a beautiful singing voice. After the soldiers learned of his talent, they often demanded that he entertain them with songs from his native country. Covered in filth, in chains, from the dark, from the cold, from the rain-drenched jail cell, the humble monk obeyed his captors, and the Taihang Mountains of northern China resounded with the beautiful songs of the Netherlands.

In September, Li gained a little victory, when, somehow, he was able to stitch together bits of stretched truth obtained during interrogations, creating a lie that suited his needs. He claimed that a prayer offered by some of the monks for the conversion of China was actually a pro-Nationalist prayer for the eradication of Communism. He named Father Maurus Bougon as the instigator, and, immediately, he launched a mandate of judgment against the monk, who had transferred to the parish of Peimong, south of Peking in 1946, after he had been accused of plotting the assassination of a Red general.

But at the same time, Li suffered a huge defeat. Because of the international uproar over the religious persecution committed by the Communists, officials in Kalgan refused his request to execute the monks.

Li had to do something. In Teng Chia Yu, food was getting scarce. Communist soldiers, who stole their food from the locals, decided it was time to move on to the next village. On October 10, the Reds forced everyone to march to Mu Chia Chwang, a village a little more than 6 miles to the north. But still, Li had too many mouths to feed. He had to do something to get the prisoners off his hands.

With winter setting in and supplies slim, Li decided to thin his herd of prisoners. He started by sending small groups of lay brothers, choir brethren and students back to the homes of their relatives. But before he released them, their “confessions” that they had made during their interrogations were read back to them, and they were ordered to sign a document, a statement of guilt that they would repent of their crimes and never enter another abbey.

And like always, threats followed.

“You are not so much to blame as the old fathers. They have deceived you. They have taught you to think incorrectly. And that is the whole trouble with you people. You do not think straight. But now, perhaps, you have learned some sense,” they were told. “Do not make the mistake of entering another monastery or seminary, and don’t get yourselves made into priests. We will soon have the whole of north China under our control. We have your photos and your fingerprints, and if we come to some city and find that you are in another monastery or that you have made yourselves priests, we won’t be so gentle with you next time. We will kill you.”

On Monday, October 13, the first group, soon to be followed by others, was freed. They headed for Peking, where they hoped to find refuge in the Trappist provisional house or with the Marist Brothers 10 miles outside the city wall. Given torture, deprivation and sub-nutrition, many could scarcely walk.

For a couple of those who remained behind, there was another plan.

On that same October 13, Father Antonius Fan (b. 1885), prior of the community, ate what was given to him for the evening meal. From the beginning of the Death March, despite the no-talking orders, despite the beatings, he recited vocal prayers without pause. His Ave Marias succeeded his Pater Nosters. His hands had been locked behind his back, with the cuffs squeezed so tightly closed around his wrists that his hands and arms swelled until gangrene set in and attacked his flesh, baring the bones in his forearms. Despite the pain, despite the cuffs, despite the leg irons, during the march to Mu Chia Chwang three days earlier he had helped carry weaker monks to the new location.

But that night of October 13, almost immediately after he ate, he complained of a violent thirst. Fever and delirium soon followed.

In a few hours, he was dead.

He was not the only one. Five days later, on October 18, Father Augustinus Faure (b. 1873), originally with the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris, a master of the novices and much loved by others in the Community, also ate what was given to him. Delirium, fever, thirst soon followed. He begged for a drink of water.

One of the guards mocked, “All your life you have served God, and now He is not able to give you a drop of water to drink.”

Father Augustinus sighed his final, dying words, “I thirst.”

Deaths continued.

On November 1, 1947, All Saints Day, Brother Malachi Chao (b. 1872), from the Jesuit mission Sien Hsien, and Brother Amadeus Liu (b. 1899) died slow agonizing deaths, in the darkness of their cells.

But as November saw the departure of some, it also brought the arrival of Father Maurus Bougon. He had heard about the warrant issued for his arrest issued in September, and he had thought about escape, but then he thought about the sufferings of his confreres, and he decided not to run. At his church, he was surrounded and taken into custody by Communist soldiers, in the beginning of November, and for the next few weeks, he was kept under strict guard as they made their way – on foot.

Soldiers and their prisoner arrived at Mu Chia Chwang on November 23, the same day Li transferred to Shih Kia Chuang, very near the Trappist abbey Our Lady of Joy, which was the daughterhouse of Our Lady of Consolation. He was on his way to a new mission, but the chain-smoking Party goon couldn’t help himself. He wanted to get in one last dig, reminding the monks that he had given them ample opportunity to leave the Church and join forces with the Communist Party.

“Even if you had apostatized, it would have availed you nothing,” he scoffed.

And to his underlings, he ordered that they execute a few of the prisoners, publicly, to save face, to save their reputations.

Father Maurus was immediately placed into solitary confinement and because he saw no other monks, he thought he was all alone.

Interrogations, accompanied with torture, soon began, and always began the same way:

“Do you know why you are here?”

“I was told that you had questions to ask me, and I have come to listen to you,” Father Maurus answered.

“You have already been arrested. You have not said a hundredth of the truth. You need to say the rest.”

Already accustomed to Marxist “confessions,” Father Maurus accused himself of small “crimes,” such as being an imperialist and being anti-Communist, but denied any allegations of espionage for the Nationalists. But, the new judge was not happy with the monk’s answers. He wanted acknowledgement of activities against the Communists, which would be enough evidence to warrant an execution.

Deathly afraid that his interrogators would lead him to say things that could be harmful to others, Father Maurus looked for an opportunity to flee.

In the beginning of December, soldiers and prisoners transferred to Huang Hua Kou, and seizing the opportunity, on December 3, Father Maurus attempted an escape.

A boy, who saw him leave his hut and hobble toward the woods, yelled, “The foreigner is running away!”

Father Maurus was immediately caught. As a punishment, the Reds cuffed his arms behind his back and suspended him from a rafter for 18 hours, straight. When he was finally cut down, he was thrown into a small, cold hut for 20 days, with his arms still cuffed, making it impossible to cover himself. As a result, his feet froze until they turned black. As soon as he learned his confreres were at the same compound, he promised his captors that he would never attempt another escape.

In Huang Hua Kou, Father Aelredus Drost, after all the beatings during interrogations, lost his ability to move. During the marches, he had developed colic and grew so weak that his pace slacked behind the others, which infuriated the Communists who clubbed him and hit him with rocks. His legs swelled until the skin split, opening sores that developed into ulcers, which, going uncared for, grew deeper until the white of his bones showed through. Afflicted with dysentery, he needed to go out often, but rarely given permission, he frequently soiled his trousers – his only pair – and would wash them in the bitter cold then put them back on – wet.

Of all the monks, he had been the one who always knew if it were a Sunday or a feast day, and each day he recited his breviary by heart.

But finally unable to do anything for himself, his brethren tried to aid him, as he slept restlessly, muttering in Dutch, his native language. At the abbey, he had been master of novices, and because of his serene, patient and sweet character, he was much loved and tenderly nursed in captivity.

“Leave him alone!” shouted one of the guards. “Don’t help that foreign dog!”

On December 5, Father Aelredus Drost (b. 1912) died. He had been the last European survivor of the Death March. Far from his family, he had been one of seven boys. Four became priests – two Trappists.

Two days later, on December 7, Father Odilius Chang (b. 1897), from the Manchurian diocese of Kirin, died in his dark cell, exhausted. He had embodied the spirit of St. Benedict: contemplation and piety. During the Death March and all the interrogations and tortures, he had never complained. At the abbey, he had been confessor and director of the oblates and postulants, and on all first Fridays, he always had directed a retreat and preached a conference. Pious, modest, reserved and humble, Father Odilius was considered an extraordinary preacher. With a burning zeal, his words, with a simple elegance, flowed like a fire from his heart into the hearts of his listeners, encouraging many vocations.

The next day, December 8, Father Bonaventura Chao (b. 1902) died. Like Father Antonius Fan, the wounds caused by the handcuffs got infected and putrefied, exposing the bones in his forearms. He was born in Hopei province, the vicariate of Peking, near the abbey. Intelligent and pious, he had taught Latin in the abbey. He was very musical and was the official cantor of the monastic choir that he led to angelic heights.

The three men, Father Aelredus, Father Odilius and Father Bonaventura, were buried together – their bodies to be forever entwined – in a shallow grave, a trench that the Communist soldiers had used as a latrine.

On December 13, Father Michaelus Hsu (b. 1901) died. During captivity, he had suffered much more because of his being the abbey’s superior, causing him to be a target of the Reds. He was chained with irons on July 23, which he had to carry throughout his captivity. From the very beginning he had anticipated the tragic end, but he had accepted with entire submission the divine will. All the monks shared the profound belief of living under the vow of obedience, even until their last breath. When his death neared, Father Michaelus named Father Chrysostomus as superior, an honor respected by all.

As those still held struggled and died, five monks maliciously rumored to be released were actually transferred elsewhere and died alone, without their confreres:

Brother Gabrielus Tien (b. 1861), born near the abbey, died on November 2.

Brother Hugo Fan (b. 1881), an acolyte, died in a village police station in Che Chia Tai in December. He was never able to receive the Holy Orders of the priesthood because of his health.

Brother Ireneus Wang (b. 1884) died on December 5, at Wo Yang Tai, of blood poisoning caused by the festering wounds in his hands, which had been tied with wire. His specialty had been in viticulture – growing grapes, which he had taught himself. He also worked with peach trees. Both crops had helped add economically to the financially strapped abbey.

Father Simon Hsu (b. 1897) died of hunger and cold on December 19, near Yuhsien, after enduring forced labor. Born in the northern province of Chahar, Father Simon had been an excellent bookbinder, blessed with an artistic ability that resulted in much success in the binding of books of the abbey, especially the large choral books.

Brother Martinus Hsu (b. 1899) died of tuberculosis, aggravated by forced labor and harsh circumstances, on December 20, at Cha Tao Ho.

There was very little to celebrate that Christmas.

Finally, on January 5, 1948, Father Maurus Bougon was reunited with his confreres.

“How do you see the future of the Trappists?” Father Chrysostomus asked him.

“The future looks very black. I fear the worst,” Father Maurus answered.

Indeed, it was.

On January 18, 1948, Brother Basilius Keng (b. 1915) died. Made a sub-deacon only the year before, he was a native of the city of Haimen, north of the delta of the Blue River. Brother Basilius was a man without defects, with a gentle character. Always smiling, he was liked by all. No one ever had difficulties with him. Not a natural scholar, he excelled in piety.

Father Chrysostomus gave Brother Basilius absolution, and he was buried right away.

Then, on January 20, 1948, six monks were rounded up. They were Father Chrysostomus, Father Seraphinus, Brother Alexius, Brother Eligius, Brother Joannes Maria and Brother Damianus.

“You are going to be freed,” the soldiers told them.

Before leaving, they all embraced Father Maurus, asking for his blessing and his prayers.

Father Chrysostomus, who sensed the soldiers were not telling the truth, said a special good bye to everyone, telling them they would see one another again in Heaven. He asked for their prayers for the final battle he faced in life, and he gave a final, fraternal, affectionate hug to Father Maurus. Then, sensing the end, he turned to Father Benedictus-Josephus Labre Hou and named him superior. Both young men, the two had been ordained together in 1945.

The six monks were taken to Pan Pu Tsun, nearby to Yang Kia Ping.

They left behind Father Maurus Bougon, Father Benedictus-Josephus Labre, Brother Rochus Fan and Brother Adrianus Wang, who would all eventually be freed, if only for a short time.

They also left behind Father Theodorus Yuan (b. 1916), who would die from tuberculosis three months later, in April, alone, in a dark cell, a prisoner till death. Father Theodorus was not the first martyr in his family. The first had been butchered in the Boxer Rebellion. He had a photographic memory and could recite complete passages from a book after reading it once. He and Father Chrysostomus had been novices together, pulling boyish pranks, gathering the wheat together then pulling the cart rather than yoking the cows. The two were opposite in disposition.

The novice Theodorus would poke fun at the novice Chrysostomus for being too slow and too calm.

The novice Chrysostomus would respond, “Why be impatient or rush, when we have eternity in front of us?”

On January 20, Father Chrysostomus faced his eternity, as he and the others were taken to Pan Pu Tsun, just a short distance from Our Lady of Consolation. The Communists wanted to make certain that the monks were “liquidated” near the abbey, to use them as an example, as a warning to others. As Li had ordered, it was time to save face; it was time to save their reputation, execution style.

In the village, large character posters were displayed announcing a meeting of the People’s Court. The names of the monks had been written in red ink – a symbol of death.

Twice the men were hauled before the People’s Court. Before the multitude, the manacled, handcuffed were accused. They had to listen to the wild, brutal screams of the accusations against the abbey and against themselves. They denied the guilt. They refused to surrender.

At the second trial, the death order was delivered, and they were to be executed immediately.

They had lived together; they would die together, as they stood together.

Brother Alexius Liu (b. 1897), from Paoting, Hopei province, was esteemed and respected by all. What he had lacked in height, since he was small in stature, he had made up for in his great virtues.

Brother Joannes Maria Miao (b. 1919) was from the vicariate of Chengting, south of Peking, in Hopei province.

Brother Eligius Hsu (b. 1918), originally from the chi-chi city of Shanghai, was the nephew of Father Michaelus Hsu, the superior. He was obedient, pious, and relished spiritual poverty, meaning he had no attachments to worldly things. Even though he came from a very wealthy family, he preferred to dress in old clothing covered with patches. Reserved and timid, as an oblate, he was permitted to talk, but he rarely did, preferring to keep to himself. A very rare character, his virtues were obedience, piety, poverty.

Brother Damianus Hwang (b. 1893) was born north of the Great Wall, in Jehol province (now Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Hebei and Liaoning provinces), in the district of Chao Yang Hsien, with the missionaries of the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Scheut. His specialty was the catechesis. How he loved to teach doctrine. A very passionate man, burning with a passion for the Church, even bubbling on occasion, yet some of the reserved or melancholy residents criticized him harshly. He was a second-generation martyr, following his father whose blood was spilled when he was hacked to death with a scimitar and knives by the Boxers in 1900.

Father Seraphinus Shi (b. 1909) was born in the Paoting diocese, in Hopei province. He had been expected to be the first Chinese abbot. His paternal uncle was Father Vicentius Shi, superior of the Trappists in Gni Pa To. Father Seraphinus had served as vice-principal of the novices, then was named cellarer of the abbey. His kind and open demeanor earned him many friendships among the peasants, who considered him a great man.

Father Chrysostomus Chang had been born in Peking on January 16, 1917 to an old Catholic family, and he had just turned 31 a few days before his execution was ordered. A young monk, cultured and strong, he concluded his days, and all the months of patience, suffering, strength in the dungeons with a characteristic, peculiar to his temperament. A paternal uncle, Father Gerardus Chang had died in November 1941 in Yang Kia Ping after a long cloistered life. During the Death March and its inflicted tortures, it was evident that Father Chrysostomus had a supernatural strength. He had been one of those beaten more than the others and had worn irons around his limbs since July. He had endured the torture of suspension, hanging from the ceiling. He had been locked up in a narrow pigsty. And during all the torments, he showed a miraculous bravery. Though the other religious also endured in silence with admirable endurance, none did so as Father Chrysostomus. He was gifted intellectually. As a child, he had been irritable and quarrelsome, but triumphed over his temperament and became generous and kind-hearted.

“We’re going to die for God. Let us lift our hearts one more time, in offering our total beings,” he said.

The verdict had just been read by a Chinese Communist officer: Death. To be carried out immediately.

The death squad – Communist soldiers at the ready – loaded their rifles with fresh rounds of ammo.

It was all over. Our Lady of Consolation was no more.

MARTYROLOGY
Father Guglielmus Cambourieu (b. 1874)
Father Chrysostomus Chang (b. 1917)
Father Odilius Chang (b. 1897)
Father Bonaventura Chao (b. 1902)
Brother Malachi Chao (b. 1872)
Brother Bartholomeus Chin (b. 1893)
Father Aelredus Drost (b. 1912)
Father Antonius Fan (b. 1885)
Brother Hugo Fan (b. 1881)
Father Augustinus Faure (b. 1873)
Brother Bruno Fu (b. 1868)
Father Alphonsus L'Heureux (b. 1894)
Father Seraphinus Shi (b. 1909)
Brother Eligius Hsu (b. 1918)
Brother Martinus Hsu (b. 1899)
Father Michaelus Hsu (b. 1901)
Father Simon Hsu (b. 1897)
Brother Damianus Hwang (b. 1893)
Brother Ludovicus Gonzaga Jen (b. 1872)
Brother Clemens Kao (b. 1899)
Brother Basilius Keng (b. 1915)
Brother Hieronymus Li (b. 1873)
Brother Marcus Li (b. 1885)
Brother Alexius Liu (b. 1897)
Brother Amadeus Liu (b. 1899)
Brother Philippus Liu (b. 1877)
Brother Conradus Ma (b. 1872)
Father Stephanus Maury (b. 1886)
Brother Joannes Maria Miao (b. 1919)
Brother Gabrielus Tien (b. 1861)
Brother Ireneus Wang (b. 1884)
Father Emilius Ying (b. 1886)
Father Theodorus Yuan (b. 1916)

“The History of Our Lady of Consolation,” by Father Stanislaus Jen, Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (OSCO)

“The History of Our Lady of Joy,” by Father Stanislaus Jen, OCSO

“Les Martyrs de N. D. de Consolation et de N. D. de Liesse: Témoins Cisterciens de Notre Temps,” by Irénée Henriot and Joseph Dong

“Los Monjes Blancos,” by Father Eusebio Arnaiz Alvarez, Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (CSsR)

“Monaci nella Tormenta: La Passio dei monaci trappisti di Yan-Kia-Ping e di Liesse testimony della fede nella Cina di Mao-Tze-Tung,” by Father Paolino Beltrame Quattrocchi, OCSO

“Regulations of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance,” published by the General Chapter of 1926

“Stars in the Sky,” by Father Patrick J. Scanlan, OCSO

“Trappists, the Reds and You,” by Father M. Raymond Flanagan, OCSO

POSTSCRIPT II: For several years, I periodically attempted to make contact, via e-mails and telephone calls, with the Trappists (in Asia, Europe and the United States), as I was very interested in writing the story of the 33 martyrs. I had no success until the spring of 2010, when I luckily reached 84-year-old Father Bernard Johnson (former abbot of the Abbey of New Clairvaux), who just happened to be working the switchboard that day. I want to personally thank Father Bernard for all his help, without which, this story would have not been possible.

Theresa Marie Moreau can be reached at TMMoreau@yahoo.com.