WARRIOR PRIEST: The Battle for the Soul of China

 

By Theresa Marie Moreau

 

Ad Jesum per Mariam.

– Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort –

 

 

Nearly midnight, a single ring from the doorbell echoed through the rectory.

With a big smile on his face, Father Malachy Murphy (1920-71, Missionary Society of Saint Columban) walked toward the entrance, on September 6, 1951, expecting friends from Huchou (old form of Huzhou) to be on the other side of the door to the Columban residence.

Instead, he found 11 police officers, all wearing white caps and drab green uniforms, standing dour-faced on the front steps. One pointed a submachine gun. His 10 comrades brandished pistols.

Stationed around the perimeter of the three-story building, at 287 Rue Maresca (former name of Wuyuan Road), in Shanghai’s French Concession, 200 officers from the Military Control Bureau stood watch. Their job: to make certain no one fled.

Father Murphy alerted his superior, Father Edward MacElroy (1911-80, Missionary Society of Saint Columban), who promptly greeted his unwelcome guests.

“We want the names of everyone here,” one of the officers demanded of Father MacElroy, who methodically ran down the litany of resident priests, finally arriving at the name of Father William Aedan McGrath (1906-2000, Missionary Society of Saint Columban).

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

“On suspicion of what?” Father MacElroy wanted to know.

“Read tomorrow’s paper,” taunted the officer, as he and the others pushed their way inside and advanced upstairs to the second floor, on reconnaissance for Father McGrath (pronounced mə-GRÆ), deemed an enemy of State for his role as spiritual director to the Legion of Mary, a Roman Catholic laity-based organization.

Previously anticipating his arrest, the missionary had already destroyed photographs and writings, any evidence that may have incriminated anyone involved with the Legion.

For the next hour, authorities ransacked his Spartan room, with its bed, desk, nightstand, book of Gospels and copy of “My Imitation of Christ,” by Thomas à Kempis. Of interest to the intruders: only a few photos of his family back home in Ireland and a long-wave radio, which received nothing but local radio stations, but on which he would be accused of tapping out messages to the United States of America.

After placing their foreign enemy under arrest, the officers stood, sticking the muzzles of their Browning handguns into his ribs, posing for propaganda photos snapped by a young, Communist woman with a Leica camera. As soon as the flashbulbs stopped popping, they pushed the priest out of his room and into the hallway, where he knelt and requested absolution from the rectory superior, who obliged, against the protests of the authorities.

 

“Keep your chin up,” Father MacElroy advised, as he stuffed a bundle – consisting of a Foxford rug remnant, a military rug and a couple cardigans – into the arms of his departing confrere.

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

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

Forced into an American-manufactured passenger car, he sat between two officers, and the car jolted forward as a military vehicle ahead, filled with more military officers, sped off. Minutes later, the political prisoner arrived at his new residence: police headquarters in Lokawei (former name of Luwan) District.

More than 20 years earlier, Father McGrath arrived in China, after departing his hometown of Dublin, during a period in time when the fastest route from the Occident to the Orient was a stomach-launching voyage aboard an ocean liner.

After six weeks of excruciating travel, the newly ordained 24-year-old priest arrived, in August 1930, at a dock in Shanghai, China’s port city, with its British and American International Settlement that neighbored the French Concession, known as the Paris of the Orient.

Onward, he floated, four more days and 700 miles westward on the Yangtze River, the flowing water that girdles China’s great expanse. At last, he arrived at his destination: the Hanyang diocese, in the province of Hupei (old form of Hubei).

During the early stages of acclimation to his new life, the missionary received an order to report to Bishop Edward Galvin (1882-1956), who had co-founded with Father John Blowick (1888-1972) the Missionary Society of Saint Columban, in 1918.

A poor bishop, he was short of priests, short of money, but blessed with a vast territory of souls needing salvation.

At the Columban headquarters, Father McGrath was to learn of his first big assignment.

“Aedan, I’m sending you to Tsienkiang, a parish that no priest has been to, so far. I’m sorry to say there is no church there. I’m even more sorry to say there is no house. And don’t ever expect a church or a house in that place. I don’t know what you’ll do or where you’ll live, but do your best. In God’s name, go,” his superior announced.

Off flew the fledgling priest, 100 miles to Tsienkiang (old form of Qianjiang), in Hupei province, where he would remain for the next 16 years, the only spiritual father to a flock scattered throughout 24 outlying mission villages. Without a car, or even roads, he walked the dirt paths for one day’s journey from one village to the next, where he bunked down for a few days as an honored guest with parishioners in their mud-and-straw huts. It took two months to cover his parish, where he baptized newborns, instructed catechumens, absolved penitential confessants, officiated marriages, buried the dead and blessed graves. Whatever needed to be done, he did it. He had no choice. There was no one else.

Well into his first year, already emotionally drained and physically exhausted, Father McGrath pleaded with Bishop Galvin to send him backup. A priest. A nun. Anyone.

“But there is no one,” Bishop Galvin explained to him.

Desperate, Father McGrath tried Catholic Action, a lay apostolic movement promoted by Pope Pius XI (Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, 1857-1939). With great intentions, the despairing missionary undertook the endeavor, which he later referred to as “McGrath’s Folly,” for it almost destroyed him. After reprimanding a group of parishioners, they exacted revenge by writing nasty letters about him to all the bishops in China.

Again, Father McGrath pleaded with his bishop for help.

Unable to send a priest, the bishop sent a book, “Legio Mariae: The Official Handbook of the Legion of Mary,” written by Francis “Frank” Michael Duff (1889-1980), a native of Dublin, Ireland, where he had founded, on September 7, 1921, the Legion of Mary, which became quite famous for cleaning up Bentley Place, a red-light district that even police refused to patrol.

“That’s not going to work. It couldn’t possibly work,” Father McGrath argued.

“Start that,” the bishop answered.

Still stinging from his failed attempt with Catholic Action, the last thing Father McGrath wanted to do was coax parishioners to assist him with spiritual endeavors. Nonetheless, he decided to give it a go, half-expecting, and perhaps half-hoping, it would fail, just to spite the bishop. For his first group, he rounded up six uneducated peasants and absolutely forbade the men to tell their wives about the meetings, which were held, in secret, in the middle of the night. That way, he reasoned, no one would know when it failed, for it was sure to fail.

Long after the local dogs stopped barking and everyone in the village – except the six men and Father McGrath – had fallen asleep, the first meeting began with all seven kneeling and praying five decades of the rosary. Following the handbook, he assigned to each man evangelization tasks that he had no time to consider, let alone do.

The following week, villagers were still in the street at midnight, so Father McGrath secretly ordered his six recruits to return in two hours. At 2 a.m., the second meeting began. Success. His apostles had accomplished all their tasks.

After six months, he finally shared with parishioners the success of the Legion, and, before he knew it, he had five presidia, five small groups of: men, women, secondary-school boys, secondary-school girls and children.

With that near-miraculous introduction to the Legion of Mary, he formally joined the organization, himself, by making his own act of consecration to Christ through Mary, as suggested by Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort (1673-1716) in his book “True Devotion to Mary,” in which he explained the best way to get to Christ is the way He came to the world – through His mother.

But as the Legion flourished, China withered.

 

†††

 

For decades, chaos had ravaged the mainland.

In November 1908, the Middle Kingdom’s royal lineage and ancient traditions began their descent after the death of Empress Dowager Tzu-Hsi (old form of Cixi, 1835-1908), soon followed by the coronation of her named successor, 2-year-old Pu-Yi Aisin-Gioro (1906-67).

Three years later, in 1911, Imperial China approached its final days of occupying the throne following the Double 10 Day (October 10) uprising that neutered the Ching (old form of Qing) Dynasty and ended the centuries-long dynastic rule of the Manchus, who had begun their royal reign in 1644.

Following a declaration formally establishing the Republic of China, on January 1, 1912, the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, old form of Guomindang) rose to power after its formation later in the year with the merging of several Republican groups.

Eventually, the Nationalist Party festered after infected with the anti-republic and anti-democratic, pro-revolution and pro-dictatorial Chinese Communists, who had opened their first chapter, in 1921, in Shanghai, 106 Rue Wantz (former name of Xingye Road), with backing from the Communist International, in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The ComIntern had dispatched Grigori Voitinsky (1893-1953), a Trotskyite, a devotee of Leon Trotsky (Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, 1879-1940), who believed in the theory of Permanent Revolution and strived for the unholy propagation of worldwide Communism.

Because of their predilection and proclivity for sadistic savagery, the Communists were lanced and drained from the putrefied ranks of the Nationalists, in April 1927, sparking the decades-long, off-and-on Chinese Civil War that raged between the two.

The leader of the Nationalists, Kai-Shek Chiang (old form of Jieshi Jiang, 1887-1975) had been born into a moneyed family of salt merchants, in Hsikou (old form of Xikou), in the province of Chechiang (old form of Zhejiang). As a young man, he attended the Imperial Japanese Army Academy, and, upon his return to his homeland, he joined the military ranks and gained fame as one of the founders of the Chinese Nationalist Party.

Head of the Communists, Tse-Tung Mao (old form of Zedong Mao, 1893-1976) had been born in Hunan province’s Shaoshan village. The strange ne’er-do-well son of a well-to-do landowner connived his way into the Chinese Communist Party at its inception. After the acrimonious split from the Nationalists, in 1927, he strong-armed his way to omnipotence by seizing a few Red ragtag armies that battled for control of China.

As a testament to its bloody ideology, the Communists left behind body-strewn paths through the mainland, hectare by hectare, village by village, mountain by mountain.

But a third contingent also vied for control of China.

From its Land of the Rising Sun, the Empire of Japan saw fractures in its neighbor’s infrastructure as an opportunity to grab land and natural resources. In an attempt to establish their own political and economic domination, in 1931, the Japanese invaded Manchuria, a region in northeast China, where they established the puppet state of Manchukuo, with Pu-Yi, the last emperor of China, as its head. And from there, they continued their conquest.

In the spring of 1939, thousands of Japanese soldiers marched into Tsienkiang, the village where Father McGrath lived.

One of the Japanese officers met with the missionary, on June 1, inside the enormous walled compound where he had sought refuge for himself and 1,500 local children and women, who feared the soldiers reputed as rapists and killers after their deadly deeds in Nanking (old form of Nanjing), during the months of December 1938 and January 1939.

While the officer entered and toured the compound, he grew flattered and affable as Father McGrath praised his atrocious Chinese and broken English. Eventually, the two arrived at the priest’s little room, where there was an old broken gramophone.

“You like music?” the officer asked.

“Yes, I like music,” Father McGrath replied.

“You like movies?”

“I do.”

His third question was vital.

“You like Loretta Young?”

“Oh, yes. I do like Loretta Young, and, in fact, she is a personal friend of mine,” he replied, with a bit of blarney.

“What! Your friend! My Loretta! Your friend!”

So excited, the officer laughed hysterically and kept repeating, “You know my Loretta! A friend of yours!”

Eventually, he calmed down enough to order, “Get me a sheet of paper!” to his subordinate.

Grabbing a calligraphy brush and a bottle of ink, the officer sat and stroked a few big characters on a large sheet of paper. From his back pocket, he pulled out a seal and stamped the paper, which he handed to the missionary.

“Put that on the gate, and if you ever get any more trouble, send up the boy to bring me down,” he said.

After that, with the sign on the front gate, not one soldier bothered the women in the compound; nonetheless, because the Japanese believed the Irish priest had an affiliation with one of the Allied Forces – Japan’s enemies during World War II – they expelled him from the town of Tsienkiang, and he retreated to Hanyang.

That’s the end of the diocese, he lamented on his way out. For without me, it’s bound to fail.

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

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

So, too, had Mao’s power.

Since January 1, 1937, Mao had holed up in Yenan (old form of Yan’an), in Shensi (old form of Shaanxi) province. In the ancient city enclosed by thick walls, the omnipotent leader introduced, in 1942, the Rectification Campaign, an experiment in brainwashing and thought control. Known as the Yenan Terror, it was the first, but certainly not the last, Chinese Communist ideological movement.

In Yenan, Mao ordered the imprisonment of thousands of his young devotees, the Chinese People’s Volunteers, in caves carved into the mountains of the Loess Plateau, where his victims endured endless interrogations, countless thought examinations, brainwashing sessions, physical torture, even death, as he pursued his perverse pleasure of bending and breaking the will of his Volunteers, to have everyone under his control.

And his strength continued to grow.

An all-out civil war between Mao’s Communists and Chiang’s Nationalists ensued after August 15, 1945, Victory Over Japan (V-J) Day, when the Japanese surrendered, thus ending World War II and the occupation of the mainland.

With the Communists – rabid anti-religious atheists – winning most of the battles, if they gained control of the mainland, the future looked dim for Catholics.

Then-Archbishop Antonio Riberi (1897-1967), appointed Apostolic nuncio to China in 1946, realized and understood that if the Communists succeeded, the foreign clergy and religious would be forced out of China, the native clergy and religious would be thrown into prison, all churches would be closed and each Catholic hospital and institution would be taken over by what would be a newly established totalitarian regime.

Something had to be done. And quickly.

In Africa, Archbishop Riberi had witnessed the evangelization power of the Legion of Mary through the work of Edel Quinn (1907-44), an Irish lay missionary. So, while in the East, he asked around and learned about Father McGrath’s success with the religious organization.

Back home, in Dublin, in 1948, enjoying some rest and relaxation, Father McGrath was contemplating how, and if, he could spread the Legion outside his own parish, when he received a message from the superior general, Father Michael O’Dwyer (1887-1975, Missionary Society of Saint Columban):

“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, Father McGrath cut short his stay and returned, post-haste, to Shanghai.

The two men met.

“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 Riberi said.

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

“Do what you’re told,” the archbishop ordered. “The first place I want you to go is to Aurora University.”

“Do you not think I should start somewhere else?”

“Do what you’re told,” he said – a second time.

Father McGrath embraced his mission. Soon the number of Legions throughout China doubled, then trebled and continued to rapidly multiply. By January 1951, the Legion of Mary would establish more than 1,000 presidia in 90 Chinese dioceses.

As he spread the Christian organization throughout the pagan land, Chinese Reds advanced toward the city of Peking (old form of Beijing), and, on October 1, 1949, Mao stood triumphantly in the Gate of Heavenly Peace where he announced the founding of the People’s Republic of China – with himself the head of the beast.

Not long after, Mao drove his nemesis from the mainland.

Around 3 a.m., on December 9, 1949, a C-47 sped down the runway of the Chengtu (old form of Chengdu) airport, in Szechuan (old form of Sichuan) province. It was the Mei-Ling, Kai-Shek Chiang’s plane christened in honor of his wife, Mei-Ling Chiang (née Soong, 1897-2003). The Generalissimo had waited, had wanted to be the last evacuee to leave Chungching (old form of Chongqing), the Nationalist provisional capital. That morning, the Mei-Ling headed for Formosa, which would become the de facto seat of the Republic of China.

The next day, December 10, the Communists grabbed Chengtu for their final conquest.

As the Communist Party rose, those in power planned and sought to destroy their political enemies, with the Roman Catholic Church a prime target.

To eliminate the Holy See, the atheistic Communist Party established the Three-Self Reform Movement – so-called for its aim to be self-governing, self-propagating and self-supporting. As the Party’s national church, it stood politically patriotic and revolutionary, separate and independent from the vehement and vocal anti-Communist Bishop of Rome, Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli, 1876-1958), despised as the running dog of American imperialists, and the Vatican, vilified as the headquarters of imperialistic cultural invasions.

Catholic missionaries gathered in Shanghai’s Catholic Central Bureau, 197 Route Ghisi (former name of Yueyang Road), where they worked as a counterrevolutionary force of truth for the faithful.

To confute the regime’s propaganda, Father Francis Xavier Legrand (1903-84, Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Scheut), drew up pamphlets that defined the position of the Church. Upon completion, bundles of the leaflets were shipped to churches in all parts of China, where priests explained the contained information to Legionaries, who then distributed them to parishioners.

Subsequently, the Three-Self Reform Movement completely failed to separate the Church from the Vatican and the faithful from the Father, resulting in one of the regime’s biggest defeats.

The Buddhists, Mao had successfully expelled from their temples. The Protestants, he had successfully attacked. But the Catholics were still being baptized, rosaries were still being said and marriages were still being witnessed.

When he learned that the Three-Self movement was not catching on because the Legion of Mary kept the Church alive, he decided that the Legion had to be crushed into submission and then be used to run the national church, independent of Rome.

In preparation for the attack, an order went out from the People’s Government demanding that each church register parish organizations, with the Legion of Mary being the only group specifically mentioned. Authorities inquired about the number of persons in each group and the names of persons in charge, citing the request was a measure to protect the Church and the Legion.

But it soon became apparent that the Communists were not sincere, for after the information had been gathered, the propaganda machine was revved up to attack the Legion. In order to discredit the group and its members, authorities classified the Legion of Mary as a counterrevolutionary, reactionary secret organization with Legionaries the running dogs of the Imperialists.

Mao, a shrewd and cruel leader, labeled the Legion as Public Enemy Number 1.

Daily, newspaper columns filled with editorial outrage accused the Legion of being the path to hell and depicted the official Three-Self national church as the way to salvation. Trams, rickshaws, shops and schools were all covered with cartoons of Legionaries and of Father McGrath. Songs were written so that even children could sing about the “crimes” of the Legionaries.

In Shanghai, Father McGrath watched as loudspeakers were nailed onto trees, seemingly everywhere, and, very quickly, shrill voices boomed from the public address system. Faceless entities described the Legion as a secret organization set up by America, and those same voices ordered the masses to inform against the Legionaries, labeled America’s secret agents.

Under the Communist cell system, the masses were organized into groups, and each had to study the Communist newspapers. By that method, the anti-Legion propaganda reached everyone, commanded to attack and report on the Legionaries, branded as traitors against the People.

Before too long, Father McGrath, then-Father Joseph Gustave Roland Prévost Godard (1914-2005, Society of Foreign Missions of Paris), and Franciscan Bishop Edouard Gabriel Quint (1905-94, Order of Friars Minor) decided to stop all Legion meetings and to burn traces of anything – including the minutes and the lists of names of all members and auxiliaries – that might help the Communists victimize Catholics.

They also decided to disband.

At the last meeting, Father McGrath instructed the Legionaries in what they were to do:

“It is not just a matter of obedience. You must burn all the minutes and everything else. And if anybody ever asks you who did it, say that you gave them to the spiritual directors, the foreign spiritual directors, and you didn’t know what happened to them.

“Remember that in the Legion you have learned three things: You have learned that you must be apostles, you have learned that you must do your apostolate through Mary, and you have learned a method for doing the apostolate. You know the method. Now go to it.”

Father McGrath remained in the rectory of the Missionary Society of Saint Columban, in Shanghai, and watched as police cars shrieked up and down the streets. Purges of 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 – political enemies of the regime – raged in the city of 5.5 million. Men, women and children disappeared from their homes in the middle of the night, never to return.

One of the priests in the city called himself the Chaplain to the Dying. He stood at his window when police cars raced by filled with people, and he granted them absolution, just in case the victims were Catholics. The cars always returned empty.

On June 6, 1951, authorities shuttered and sealed the Catholic Central Bureau.

From that day on, Father McGrath waited to be arrested, terrified, spending a good deal of time praying in the chapel, going around the Stations of the Cross, trying to muster courage from the Passion of Christ.

At the 12th station, when Christ is raised on the cross and dies, Father 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 badly at the thought of death that he stopped saying that prayer; instead, he opted for Christ’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:42): “Father, if Thou wilt, remove this chalice from me: but yet not my will, but Thine be done.”

Finally, the Communists arrived for him.

In the early morning hours of September 7, 1951, the Ireland native was arrested and driven to Lokawei District Police Station.

The next day, September 8, 1951, Archbishop Riberi was expelled from the country, after being under house arrest at his official residence in Nanking (old form of Nanjing), confined with round-the-clock surveillance, since June 26. His banishment officially broke relations between the Vatican and China.

During Father McGrath’s first hours in custody, he stood as two soldiers pointed submachine guns at him while several others searched the diminutive priest and confiscated his watch, rosary beads and religious medals.

“Ha! They all have these things!” one of the authorities scoffed.

Forced to strip naked, he stood barefoot on the concrete floor, as officers looked through his clothing for anything that he could use to kill himself. They removed the laces from his shoes and the buttons off his trousers, but they never removed his extra-large brown scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel hanging around his neck.

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

It was her first sign that she was with him.

At 3 in the morning, guards ordered him to lie down on a bit of straw scattered on the concrete. Even with a submachine gun trained on him, he fell fast asleep and stayed asleep until 5 a.m., when he was kicked awake and ordered to get ready.

For the first interrogation, he was led upstairs by two armed soldiers and escorted into a brilliantly lit room. Around the table sat and stood nearly a dozen “judges” – a Communist euphemism for interrogators. Above them, a picture of Mao glowed radiantly from a spotlight that shined upon it.

That, apparently, was the opening of his “case,” a Communist euphemism for trial.

They told him to sit down and asked him his name.

Then they asked, “What are you arrested for?”

“I presume, it is because I was spreading the Legion of Mary in China,” he said.

“What is the Legion of Mary?”

For the next hour, he told them all about the Legion of Mary, how he had started it in China and how he had worked for the last three years promoting the religious organization, after Archbishop Riberi had requested that he work to spread the Legion.

When he finished, one of the judges spoke.

“You have spoken nothing but false and empty lies. You are now being tried, and if you confess the crimes of the Legion of Mary, you will receive leniency. If you don’t, you will be punished,” he said and continued talking in that same vein at great length.

After many hours, Father McGrath was ordered downstairs.

That was the first of the endless interrogations that lasted right up to the very end of his imprisonment. Sometimes questioning lasted six hours, after which he would return to his cell, mentally and physically exhausted. No session ever lasted fewer than three hours, and for a three-week period, he was grilled twice daily. Questions always centered on where he had traveled while in China, specifics about the Legion of Mary, Legionaries and Archbishop Riberi. The same inquiries recurred, and he responded with the same answers.

After his first interrogation, he slept nearly five hours, until he was awakened again at 5 in the morning and forced to sit on a mat until 9 that night, with guards changing every two hours. During that second day in prison, again the guards strip-searched him. Again, they missed his Lady of Mount 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, he thought.

 

†††

On the third day, Father McGrath was ordered to roll up his few possessions and to follow the guard across the way, where he was placed in a cell, Number 12, with two other prisoners:

George, a husband and a father of four sons, was arrested after he helped an American ambassador escape from the mainland to Hong Kong. Although he had attended a Catholic school, he admitted that he never understood the religion and expressed a desire to learn.

The other prisoner was a Chinese Catholic, who blessed himself before going to sleep and blessed himself before the next morning’s breakfast, when he offered one of his eggs to Father McGrath. However, sharing anything was strictly against jailhouse rules, and the gift-giving was spotted by a guard, who reported it. The Chinese Catholic was moved to another cell.

Guards replaced him with Leo Letenski, a white Russian Orthodox who believed in God but had only a vague knowledge of religion. A former boxer, about 6 feet tall, his size intimidated the guards, who clamped heavy, double chains on his legs at all times, as well as handcuffs and two irons bars behind his back during interrogations.

The cellblock, designed like an army hut, contained 12 cells, each a different size. Father McGrath’s measured about 8 feet wide and 10 feet deep. Very high up the outer wall, a couple small windows let in some light. Opposite the windows, the iron gate that the guard paced by every so often.

Although the jail held 70 or 80 prisoners, or possibly even 100, only a single common toilet stood in the middle of the hut. Several times during the day, inmates received permission to use the toilet, but never during the night. So although they received a drink of hot water after each meal, they dared not drink too much, for the inconvenience was too great. Subsequently, they often suffered dehydration, with their tongues swelling, making it difficult to swallow any kind of food.

In times of bladder desperation during the night, men attempted to secretly relieve themselves in a tiny spittoon. Father McGrath was caught twice, and both times the guard entered the cell and tried to force him to drink the urine. After many months, authorities allowed a wooden bucket in each of the cells and permitted the men, if they reported, to relieve themselves.

To report, a prisoner stood at attention like a soldier and announced, “Baogao!” Chinese for “Report!”

“What do you want?” the guard asked after walking to the cell.

Prisoners would then request permission.

During daylight hours, prisoners were to sit on the floor, to remain silent, to think of their crimes and not to move without receiving permission.

If they wanted to do something out of the ordinary – stand up, cough, sneeze, spit into the spittoon or retrieve an extra coat from the bundle of personal items placed neatly in the back right-hand corner, with their shoes hidden behind – they had to report, and guards either granted permission or not.

Strictly forbidden during daytime hours: sleep. By depriving prisoners of badly needed rest, the Communists aimed to keep the nerves of their political prisoners at full stretch, with nothing to remember but the interrogation of the previous night and nothing to look forward to but the interrogation in the night ahead.

Father McGrath had just laid his head on the pillow and fallen fast asleep when guards called him out the first time from Cell Number 12 for interrogation. He received a kick and was told to dress himself and exit his cell quickly. Escorted upstairs with two armed guards, he was shown into a similar room where he had been judged previously.

At the table sat a couple secretaries and three other persons, including one whom prisoners called the “Barking Judge.”

The Barking Judge asked him his name, where he was from and, after a while, told him to sit and inquired about the Legion of Mary, which he described as a secret reactionary organization.

Father McGrath corrected the interrogator that the Legion was neither reactionary nor secret.

“Yes, of course. We invited you to the police station to tell us all about the Legion of Mary. We waited for you to come along, but you didn’t come, so we invite you now to come and tell us,” the Barking Judge said.

“It’s a very peculiar sort of invitation – that the police came in the middle of the night and took me away and didn’t let me sleep and put handcuffs on me,” the priest responded, tongue in cheek.

The Barking Judge simply sneered and asked for the names of the spiritual directors in the district.

The Communist system was so perfect, because if they wanted to know anything about anybody, they actually already knew it. In their files, they had the names of all the Legionaries, given some months earlier when authorities ordered members of the Legion of Mary to register in their respective churches.

So, of course, Father McGrath gave those few names.

Then the Barking Judge asked for the names of the officers of the senatus, which the missionary knew were all written down and kept in files in all the Shanghai police stations.

Still, he thought to himself, Well, I am going to refuse, just to see what will happen.

“If you’ll excuse me, I am not going to give those names,” he answered with a Chinese expression that showed he attempted to be polite without exhibiting toughness or stubbornness.

Already, he had learned that the more obstinate someone was in their talk or the more discourtesy they showed in their speech to interrogators, the more determined the authorities were to crush those defiant ones, apart from gaining any information.

Whether or not it was on account of that politeness in his answer, his interrogators didn’t exert much pressure on him for a while, even though they may have thought that he would have relented immediately under force.

The Barking Judge did not make any remark, but he steered toward general questions of the Legion and, eventually, worked back around again to the names.

“What about those names?” he asked.

Father McGrath refused again, and the Barking Judge veered to some other topic, until he asked a third time.

“No. I told you, I am not giving them,” Father McGrath said, good-naturedly.

In response, the Barking Judge ordered the priest to stand up and blasted him with a lecture on his position as prisoner – that he was bound to speak and that he would receive great punishment if he were not honest and open in his answers. Then he went off again on another general question.

A fourth time, he asked for the names.

“You are back again to the same question, aren’t you?” Father McGrath answered, half-jokingly.

The secretary to the left of the Barking Judge laughed out loud, instantly remembered that he was a Communist and that he should not laugh at such a thing, straightened his face and continued writing.

After three or four hours of back-and-forth banter, Father McGrath was ordered downstairs.

“Go down, and think. Go down, and think of your position as a prisoner, that you are bound to confess to us. And we will ask you again.”

To press for names was the duty of the Barking Judge, who held his interrogations during the night. Frequently, he shrieked and jumped around the room, trying to force the priest to give the names, and he did not like to be thwarted.

About the third night, after interrogated twice earlier in the day, Father McGrath had just gone to sleep in his cell when he was kicked awake around midnight. Brought before the Barking Judge and forced to stand for hours, the missionary was so exhausted his mind simply shut down as the pre-dawn sun began its glow on the horizon.

Apparently, the interrogator had been looking at a photograph of his father, William McGrath, a King’s Counsel barrister originally from Portaferry, County Down. While living with his wife, Gertrude, and their five children, at 129 Altona Terrace, North Circular Road, Dublin, a knock sounded at the door, at 1:30 a.m., on January 14, 1921. After descending the stairs to investigate, the family patriarch was confronted by a group of masked men with guns. Shot four times, he was rushed to Saint Vincent’s Hospital, where he died, at 9:30 that morning. His killers were never found, but were believed to have been political opponents.

From his seat behind the table, the Barking Judge stared at Father McGrath.

“If I were in Ireland and stirred up the people as you have done here, what would your Irish government do to us?” he asked, sneering. “Ireland. Ha! We will be in Ireland to liberate you!”

Well, that woke up the exhausted priest.

“Thanks very much. We are liberated,” he replied.

“We will liberate you more!”

As a Communist, he thought of worldwide Communism, which admittedly copied, but perverted, the practices of the Church. Catholics are bound by their very baptism to be apostles, but very many are not. However, Communists, promoters of Socialism, their brand of religion, rabidly work not only to demoralize and enslave their own country but also to spread the demoralization and enslavement throughout the world, to liberate the world from God and from the Blessed Mother.

The thought of Ireland strangled by Communism chilled the priest to the bone and stuck with him long after he returned to his cell.

At that time, he was still deciding whether he would give the names, even though he knew perfectly well that they had them. He understood that, eventually, the only thing to do was to give them the names and to tell the absolute truth about the Legion of Mary and to let them see for themselves that there was nothing reactionary about the lay apostolic association.

The following night decided him.

After a couple hours of sleep, he was called up, about 11 or 12 o’clock. The Barking Judge had placed on the table between them a display of various torture devices that included cuffs and chains, and as soon as the session began, he asked that same question about the names.

“No. I am not giving them.”

Rising from his chair, the Barking Judge walked around the table, picked up the French handcuffs and clamped them onto Father McGrath’s forearms. Screwed tightly, the cuffs caused the circulation to stop and the hands immediately started swelling, accompanied with horrific pain until his hands became quite dead.

“Ha! Where is God now?” the Barking Judge asked.

“The answer given in every Chinese catechism: God is everywhere. There is nowhere He is not. He is here.”

After two or three hours, the interrogator removed the handcuffs and ordered the priest to write down his history from the time he was born until the time he arrived in China. Quite a long narration to write, it was not easy. Exhausted and with his hands swollen, he could hardly hold the pen between his fingers. But still, in front of a handgun, he had to do it. When finished, he was led down to his cell, where he slept for only a couple of hours.

One following night, just after he had fallen to sleep, he was wakened and escorted to the interrogation room, as usual. In the “court” that night, a great number of people – seven or eight, all dressed in their full uniform – stood and sat about.

From the very start, the Barking Judge aggressively demanded the names.

“We’ll kill you! We’ll cut your head off! We’ll hang you up!” he shrieked, jumping about the floor.

Two men with Tommy guns, who stood beside Father McGrath with his hands cuffed behind his back, were ordered to stand in very close to the priest.

At that point, he decided in the matter of the names. They knew them already, they had them in front of them, they had them in every police station in Shanghai, and it was a matter of no principle. He decided to give the names and to hold onto the important things, namely, that the Legion was neither reactionary nor secret, that it was a purely religious organization.

“Well, you have the names already, I’ve told you that, and it doesn’t make any difference,” he said, naming three senatus members.

When he mentioned the names, they opened his handcuffs and let him sit down for a while, the first time in quite a long time. He knew only their surnames and their Christian names; their Chinese given names he did not know, and the Communists were not satisfied.

They pressed, and they pressed for the Chinese names.

“I simply don’t know them. We never called them by those names,” he explained.

For about a month or so, they attempted to squeeze the Chinese names out of him, and, possibly, in the end, they were convinced that he really did not know them.

After enduring interrogations, Father McGrath realized that their methods were far more thorough than he had ever imagined.

Before his imprisonment and before the rounds of arrests, one priest frequently said to him, “Well, we just won’t tell them anything, because they certainly don’t know more than we know.”

Following his release from prison and expulsion from China, Father McGrath met that same priest, who laughed and said, “You know, I realize now that they actually did know more than I knew.”

But while still in prison, Father McGrath understood that there was no way to evade the questions. Interrogators had such a method of questioning everybody that they eventually found out whether a statement was true or false just by asking many people on the same subject. There was only one way to tackle an interrogation, and that was to tell the truth.

Each time he descended from the “courtroom,” they ordered him to return to his cell, to think things out clearly, to return and then to tell them his thoughts.

Well, his policy was never to think. He was not that kind of person, who could think clearly.

While sitting in his cell, he pondered the Gospel words of Matthew 10:19-20. “When they shall deliver you up, take no thought how or what to speak: for it shall be given you in that hour what to speak. For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.”

That became his policy, and it never failed him.

So when the Barking Judge shouted at him and sent him down with his handcuffs on and demanded, “Go down, think this out and come back with an answer,” he entered his cell and immediately forgot all about the orders and continued with his prayers or with the religious instruction of George, his cellmate.

That was the main reason he never worried, not from the moment he entered prison until the moment he exited.

 

†††

 

One month after Father McGrath’s arrest, the official attack against Legionaries and the Legion of Mary began, on October 8, 1951.

The strike was organized by the Military Control Committee, the most feared and highest local authority in Shanghai. It was the same group of Communist thugs responsible for the registration of those who supported Nationalist leader Kai-Shek Chiang and also responsible for the subsequent bone-chilling executions.

The Military Control Committee demanded the registration of all Legionaries.

In Shanghai, 40 special registration centers were opened with about 500 officials waiting to welcome registrants. Outside the doors, 6-foot-tall placards posted: registration of reactionary and secret organization – the legion of mary.

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.”

For those who registered early, clemency was promised. For those who didn’t, punishment, prison and possibly death awaited.

Very few reported. Very few registered.

A month after the attack began against Legionaries, a prisoner across the way from Father McGrath died, on November 11, 1951. For two months prior to his death, he had vomited so violently day and night that prisoners nearby pitied him and those in the cell with him.

The prisoner who died was Father Cheng-Ming “Beda” Chang (old form of Zhengming Zhang, 1905-51, Society of Jesus), the Jesuit rector of Saint Ignatius College.

Authorities outlawed a funeral cortege; however, in the dead of night, November 13, his immediate family and two priests escorted the body to Rest in Peace Cemetery, 1115 Rubicon (former name of Hami) Road, on the outskirts of the city, about 6 miles westerly of Zikawei.

Throughout Shanghai, word spread of the much-loved priest’s death, which brought the city’s faithful together.

Following the Communist takeover of the mainland, then-Bishop Pin-Mei “Ignatius” Kung (old form of Pinmei Gong, 1901-2000), the bishop of Shanghai, faced quite a problem.

Many faithful Catholics and clergy realized there could be no compromise with the Communists. Others, along with their pastors, believed that a compromise with the Communists was actually possible, and that the Legionaries were far too strict.

The two factions posed the danger of a split, which would have been disastrous.

However, the death of Father Beda Chang, while in prison, settled the question of the compromise: There would be none. Roused, the Catholics of Shanghai rallied together.

Masses for the priest were offered in churches all over the city, not Requiem Masses, but Masses in red vestments to honor a martyr.

Legionaries wrote a letter, in their own blood, to the bishop of Shanghai: “We will follow you wherever you go. We are proud to live in this age of persecution, and there can be no compromise.”

That decided Bishop Kung. With the death of Father Chang uniting all Catholics, the Church in Shanghai presented a united front and a steadfast resistance. No one registered from that day forward.

But the Communists said to the Legionaries, “We are not finished, yet. We will come back again.”

 

†††

 

Still in Cell Number 12, Father McGrath was subjected to a strip search every day or every second day by the same team, who, oddly enough, never spotted the priest’s brown scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, with a large one in front and a large one in back, on a string over his shoulders.

Until one day, after three months, they stripped his clothing off.

“Where did you get that?” they asked, pointing to the scapular.

As he remained silent, they ripped it from his neck.

In the cell he remained, until April 9, 1952, when guards ordered the Irish missionary to pack his things. Pushed into an American car, he was transferred to Shanghai Municipal Prison, commonly called Tilanqiao by Shanghainese and Ward Road Jail by foreigners for its address at 117 Ward (former name of Changyang) Road.

One of the largest prisons in the world, built by the British in the Hongkew (old form of Honkou) District, an industrial area of Shanghai, the penal institution’s cell blocks sat on 10 acres, enclosed by a security wall higher than 15 feet, designed to keep in the 18,000-or-so prisoners.

Opened for business in 1903, the facility was taken over by the Communist’s Military Control Committee of Shanghai, on May 28, 1949, renamed the Shanghai People’s Court Prison, and then renamed, in 1951, Shanghai Municipal Prison.

Upon entrance, Father McGrath was searched, his fingerprints rolled, handed a piece of bamboo with his identification number, 2146, and escorted to Cellblock Number 5, one of many concrete buildings. Thus began his solitary confinement.

 Most cellblocks in Ward Road Jail had five floors, with 90 cells in the middle of each floor: 45 cells on one side and 45 on the other side. Each row of cells had their inside walls back to back with the other row, which they could not see. All cells faced the outside walls, with the only light emanating from dim bulbs screwed into the ceilings along the long corridors.

In his cell, no bed, no table, no chair, no window, no water, no toilet, only a bucket for waste elimination. Cramped quarters, he could not stretch his arms out to the side without having to bend his fingers. When he laid down, his 5-foot-3-inch frame fit perfectly.

After his first night, his first morning began.

Following breakfast, his cell door opened. Ordered to roll up his things, he was led out by a guard and escorted upstairs, into a cell on the second floor.

Twice a day, he received a minimum portion of brown rice, the kind usually fed to livestock, slopped into a filthy square tin, just wide enough to fit between the iron bars. The first meal arrived at 9 a.m., the second at 3 p.m. Each followed with a single cup of hot water.

Cellmates? Bedbugs. Thousands and thousands of bedbugs, which Father McGrath considered rather unfair since he had no bed. In the middle of the night, he often woke to find bugs crawling all over his body, sucking his blood. In the mornings, he found tiny festering bubbles on his skin.

At Tilanqiao, interrogations continued.

Regularly, at night, just as soon as he spread his quilt on the floor, around 9 o’clock, guards opened the gate and escorted him to another prison block, where he received a small piece of bamboo with a number on it.

Marched into an empty cell, he was locked inside and remained standing, handcuffed, rarely granted permission to sit, as he answered questions all night long from different interrogators, who arrived every couple hours, placed a table against the bars and interrogated him for as long as they wished.

In the early morning hours, guards escorted him back to his cell, where he was to sit, awake, on the floor all day. A form of torture, after enduring interrogations during the night, it was next to impossible for him to keep his eyes open during the day, for he was not allowed to sleep. That was the rule. Sleep deprivation was mental and physical torture used to soften up inmates for interrogations.

All hours of the day, guards quietly entered one end of the block and strolled along the corridor, to keep an eye on prisoners, to make sure no one nodded off. A guard might be in the corridor for 10 minutes, for five minutes, or he might be there for an hour. When the guard left, Father McGrath never knew.

During the day, he often fell asleep or meditated, and each time his eyes closed, a guard would pop open the cell door and punish him, sometimes binding his hands behind his back with French handcuffs and tightening the links; other times, in the winter, stripping him naked and forcing him to stand in the freezing air for 30 minutes.

But then, something extraordinary happened.

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

After that, the sparrow became a regular mealtime mooch. One day, Father McGrath noticed that the bird whistled, flew away, and 10 seconds later a guard appeared. With its acute hearing, the bird had heard the key in the door, which caused him to take flight.

Father McGrath was in luck. The sparrow signaled when the guard approached, giving him enough time to sit up, rub the sleep from his eyes and keep them wide open, so as not to be caught with his eyes closed. When the sparrow reappeared and whistled, he knew the guard was gone, and he would be able to catch a little sleep.

That sparrow stayed with him during the rest of his imprisonment, even when the guards opened his cell, ordered him to pack up his bits of rags, slipped a sack over his head and moved him to another cell. Whether to another floor or to another cellblock altogether, within five minutes, he heard a whistle. His loyal, feathered companion always found him.

 

†††

 

In Tilanqiao, prisoners secretly passed items to one another through various ways. And Cellblock Number 9, the foreigner cellblock where Father McGrath was transferred to, around July 1952, was no different.

One day, he received a postage stamp, which he flipped over to discover beautiful teeny-tiny writing from Wolfgang Hermann Gruen, a German Jew falsely accused of espionage and locked up in Tilanqiao, on October 24, 1951.

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

Locked inside Communist prisons, many priests welcomed the opportunity to evangelize. Father McGrath wanted to begin religious instruction, but he had no paper, no pencil.

Walter the white Russian, a criminal treated decently by the Communists, who considered him a comrade because of his Russian heritage, was a trustee worker prisoner entrusted with the job of rolling the food cart from cell to cell, distributing tins of rice during mealtimes.

One day, he noticed Father 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 crooked hands on little bits of rough, brown square sheets of toilet paper and snuck them to Father McGrath, who used them to reply to Gruen and instructed him the best he could under the circumstances.

As Christmas Day neared, Father McGrath received a note.

“Never in my life have I known a Christmas as happy as this. There is so much give and take. We are all suffering, yet there is such good feeling between us,” wrote Gruen, who, after his release, arrived in Hong Kong and sought a priest who baptized him into the Church.

On Christmas Eve, word spread from cell to cell that everyone must be very quiet at 5 in the evening, when the guards would change. No one knew why or from whom the message came, but at 5 o’clock there wasn’t a sound from the cells as everyone listened intently.

Suddenly, soft notes floated from the cell of Dilmus “Dil” Teague Kanady (1919-74), a 6-foot-4 American, born in Pasadena, Texas, who, before his imprisonment, had been in charge of the Shanghai office of E.T. Robertson & Sons Agency, cotton controllers of Boston. He had been arrested, on April 27, 1951, during the Communist purge of foreign businessmen, when the regime grabbed control of private property and liquid assets. Weighing 225 pounds when taken into custody, he had already lost much of the 65 pounds he would lose before his release, on September 26, 1955.

Against all rules of the prison, where inmates were not even allowed to whisper, Kanady burst out in a beautiful tenor voice, singing “Silent Night,” sweetly and with great emotion.

In those cold, gray cells, the caged men listened as notes from one of the most famous and, perhaps, one of the most beautiful Christmas carols pierced through the prison gloom.

Silent night, holy night,

All is calm, all is bright.

Round yon Virgin Mother and Child,

Holy Infant so tender and mild.

Sleep in heavenly peace,

Sleep in heavenly peace.

 

As his last note faded, a terrific burst of clapping erupted inside the cellblock, immediately followed by the sound of guards rushing up the stairs to the singer’s cell. Of course, they punished him, but they were too late to stop him. He knew they could hurt him a dozen different ways, but he didn’t care.

A week or so later, they saw him in the exercise yard, where the men walked around in a circle.

“Boys, it was worth it,” he whispered.

 

†††

Posted on cell walls were the prison rules, which, in part, read: “If you wish to win the generosity of the government, you can gain merit by informing on your cellmate or anyone who thinks, speaks or acts against the People’s Government.”

Meaning: Inform on one another.

And everyone did.

As the only means of receiving better treatment and, perhaps, a reduction in sentencing, common knowledge prevailed that everyone in prison informed. That was one of the reasons why the Communists gave tremendous prison sentences, generally a death sentence, which would be commuted to life imprisonment if the condemned informed sufficiently.

The informant system worked well because of the cell unit, into which everyone throughout Communist China was forced. All men, women and children had to be in cells, whether in the workplace, neighborhood associations or schools.

Each cell was a small organizational unit, generally a group of, perhaps, eight or 10, with a particularly aggressive member in charge of the others during weekly ideological brainwashing sessions, when one of the members read aloud newspaper pieces, followed by a mandatory group discussion, so everyone in each cell knew what everyone else in that cell thought and did.

And the primary rule of a cell unit was to inform on anyone who thought, spoke or acted against the People’s Government, regardless of relationship. Kinship of father, mother, brother, sister, husband, wife meant nothing. The only important relationship was with the People’s Government. That was why parents were terrified of their children. Husbands and wives were divided by that informant system, which was efficient, which could not be escaped, and which allowed absolutely no freedom. Everyone just had to do it.

In prison, since everyone informed on one another – prisoners on other prisoners, prisoners on guards, guards on prisoners and guards on other guards – authorities had a thousand eyes and knew exactly what was going on.

Reported on for one thing or another, Father McGrath was placed in a more isolated cell, on the fourth floor, in the evening of March 24, 1953 – the eve of the Feast of the Annunciation of Mary.

After a few months, someone reported that he communicated with others on the floors below, which he could view through the block’s ventilation airshaft. Transferred, in mid-June 1953, to the fifth floor, the top floor right under the roof on the west side of the building, the heat during the summer of 1953 nearly baked him alive.

For some, the heat and the isolation proved too great.

After that seemingly interminable summer, sometime in September a young Chinese man, in the cell to the right of Father McGrath, began to sob. He sobbed most of the day, and he sobbed through the night. For one month, he rarely slept. Then one morning, just after the whistle blew, he began talking, very loudly. His voice suddenly changed, and he began to shriek. He gripped the bars and shook the thick rods of iron.

It was all over.

A cold sweat beaded on Father McGrath’s forehead, and a shiver ran down his back. He knew the poor man lost his mind, went completely mad. For two or three weeks, he was shaken, thinking that might very easily happen to him, if he could not keep his balance.

On the other side of Father McGrath’s cell, a young man sat and talked gibberish all day and all night. When his food arrived, he refused to eat, but he also refused to return his rice tin to the worker prisoners.

Two more, in the row behind, went mad. One of them shrieked during the day and during the night.

Someone down the corridor found something that he hid and sharpened and sharpened until it was razor sharp. One morning, guards found him lying dead in a pool of blood seeped from his sliced artery.

Another one went mad, spent the day playing music on his water mug. Beating his toothbrush against the mug, he sang like a star of the Chinese opera, which amused Father McGrath, who believed that the singer was the only free man in Tilanqiao, for he did what he liked and authorities had no effect on him.

As each lost his mind, Father McGrath felt frightened, just as he had felt when the first one next to him went mad. The sweat beaded on his forehead. He stood, and he gripped the bars. No place to run. Nowhere to go. No escape.

Will I go mad myself? he wondered.

And then he remembered that he had consecrated himself to the Blessed Mother and that he had promised never to be uneasy. He remembered de Montfort’s “True Devotion to Mary,” which he had read for many years and, yet, had never properly understood until one day, while visiting Dublin, in 1948, he met a Legionary, a civil servant, a busy man with a family.

While the two walked up O’Connell Street, the Legionary talked clearly about de Montfort’s book and about his own true devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. With simplistic, insightful clarity, he explained that when he had consecrated himself to Our Lady he had done nothing more than live in imitation of Christ, the only one who lived knowingly for nine months in the womb of His mother, the spouse of the Holy Ghost and that all graces are given through her hands.

Living in Mary and with Mary was that which gave the Legion its power.

So, in that Tilanqiao prison cell, Father McGrath remembered his own consecration to Mary, and he made a decision.

From this day forward, I promise never to be uneasy for anything, past or future. I forbid myself to think about yesterday. I forbid myself to think about tomorrow. Leave it to God, and leave it to the Blessed Mother, he vowed.

On the floor he sat perfectly happy and fell asleep until the next morning.

When he saw the light, he stood, kissed the bars and whispered Galatians 6:14, which would become his morning offering: “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.”

Still behind bars, once he obtained his balance, he was able to sit peacefully on the floor during the day and to sleep soundly during the night, while those around him cried and shrieked, but their madness didn’t upset him at all.

And he adopted a motto from Matthew 6:34, Christ’s words: “Be not therefore solicitous for tomorrow: for the morrow will be solicitous for itself. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.”

Never was he to think of yesterday, of what he had said or of what the consequences from his words might have possibly been. Never was he to think of tomorrow, of the possibility that he could be shot or, worse still, that he could remain in prison for life. For he realized that the thought of yesterday could have broken him in a few hours and that the thought of life imprisonment would have done the same.

So, too, he realized that he had to get down to a life of a hermit, and that he had to learn to do something besides his prayers.

As a Catholic seminarian, he had been trained to never waste a second of his time and to always prepare his day, because if he allowed his mind to wander, he would do and accomplish nothing.

Mentally, he scribbled down a daily schedule so that from the moment the morning whistle blew to the moment the night whistle blew, he would be busy. From sunrise to sunset, his day had to be filled, without leaving five minutes vacant, for five minutes thinking about something else could have broken him. He could have lost his mind. The tiniest little thing of the past, even the recollection of a near motor accident, could have set him off, for it just went around and around in his mind, and he had no means of getting it out. Therefore, he had to forbid himself all those things, and from morning until night he had to fill up the day.

His daily routine:

Each day began with the rising signal – the guard’s shrill whistle – about half past 5 or 6 in the morning. He rose, put away his quilts in the back right-hand corner, got down on his knees with a rag, rubbed the dust off the floor from every corner and swept it outside.

After his morning offering, he diligently performed his exercises, which he had learned from one of his former cellmates, Leo Letenski, the white Russian boxer. He rolled on his back from the floor into a standing position and worked every part of his body, from the top of his head to his toes, fingers, even his eyes, moving everything to ensure circulation throughout.

When the basin was placed outside his cell for morning ablutions, he dipped his little towel in the water and washed his face. After he brushed his teeth, the toothbrush and toothpaste would be taken away, and then he dressed himself and sat down for an hour-long meditation, which was never very difficult, because there were no distractions whatsoever.

About that time, the worker prisoners carted along the drinking water, in a big wooden bucket, and poured into his mug a little hot water, in which he always sprinkled a pinch of salt, affectionately thinking of it as his Lough Derg soup, because it was so much like the simple cup of hot water with salt permitted during Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, an ancient, three-day pilgrimage on County Donegal’s Station Island, in the waters of Lough Derg.

Around 8 a.m., the rice arrived with a little vegetable in a grimy tin pushed through the bars. Sitting back, he dipped his chopsticks into his gruel. When finished, he pushed it out again.

After breakfast, he rose and took a little stroll – a few steps backward and a few steps forward in his cell – while he hummed to himself the “Te Deum,” the “Magnificat” and a couple Irish songs. While still stepping back and forth, he quizzed himself on Chinese characters that he had scribbled on a dozen or so sheets of toilet paper.

Then he joined himself, spiritually, with the priests throughout the world offering the Holy Mass. Through the liturgy he went, from the beginning to the end, as much as he could remember. At Holy Communion, he made a spiritual Communion for quarter of an hour to half an hour, which he found to be one of the greatest consolations during all his time behind bars.

On Sundays and feast days, he sometimes celebrated a High Mass, which meant that he sang the “Gloria,” “Credo,” the “Agnus Dei,” “Sanctus,” “Pater Noster” and all the different parts. Other times, he celebrated a Requiem Mass, always a great joy to him, which he nearly remembered in its entirety, even the “Dies Irae.”

After Mass, he offered his act of thanksgiving, for 30 to 60 minutes, and then sat on the floor for some mental study: analyzing the Latin of hymns or translating into Latin some Gospel passages, as best as he remembered. Next, walking back and forth, he prayed three rosaries in a row and offered the prayers of the Legion of Mary.

Back on the floor, he composed lines of poetry that he repeated and repeated and repeated. Putting his poetry aside, he made a spiritual, imaginary visit to the Blessed Sacrament housed in the nearby Sacred Heart Catholic Church, 260 Nanzing (old form of Nanxun) Road.

By then, it was about 2 p.m., and the hot water for dinner would arrive, into which he would add a pinch of salt, his Lough Derg soup. When dinner arrived in the tin, he would finish it in a few minutes and push it back out.

Post-meal exercise followed, stepping back and forth as he hummed the “Miserere” and the “Benedictus” and other little songs. Sitting on the floor, he continued his studies. After that, up and three more rosaries, always followed by the Legion of Mary prayers. Back on the floor, he wrote out Chinese characters on his knee with his finger, mentally went over the Gospels in Chinese and then tried to write those on his knee.

During the evening, he made his Stations of the Cross and spiritually attended Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, softly singing all the Benediction hymns and prayers while walking back and forth, sometimes for half an hour or three quarters of an hour. Then he prepared his meditation for the next morning and made an examination of conscience.

Twice a day, he made his particular examen, his examination of conscience, as recommended in “Spiritual Exercises,” written by Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556, founder of the Society of Jesus in 1540). He thought about his predominant passion that caused him the most trouble, counted how many times he failed and resolved to do better. To battle his predominant passion in prison, he was never to think of yesterday and never to think of tomorrow. That was followed by an “Act of Contrition.”

Around 9 p.m. the guard’s whistle sounded at bedtime, and he would have a little Benediction, imagining himself receiving blessings.

Finally, he spread his quilt upon the floor and fell asleep. There was no lights-out, for the dim light in the corridor outside his cell burned all night.

Locked inside the most awful place of misery imaginable, yet he felt perfectly peaceful.

 

†††

Although Father McGrath knew most of the feasts, to determine the date of Easter was difficult, especially in 1954, his third year in prison. He had known the date for 1952. In 1953, he had learned the feast date from someone else. But in 1954, he was isolated on the fifth floor, and he just had to try to calculate it himself.

After he heard firecrackers exploding outside to celebrate Chinese New Year – determined by the new moon – he worked back from Septuagesima and the different Sundays until he arrived at what he believed to be the Friday before Palm Sunday and sang “Stabat Mater.”

The next week, when he sang “Victimae Paschali Laudes” for what he believed was Easter Sunday, he heard “Stabat Mater” quietly sung by his friend Father Legrand, in a cell down the row. The next Sunday he heard “Victimae Paschali Laudes.”

Both had been wrong by a couple of weeks. Father Godard was the only one who knew how to work it out from the moon, which he had seen very clearly and from which he was able to calculate the correct date of Easter: April 18.

Not long after the Easter season of 1954, a guard opened Father McGrath’s cell door. A man entered, cut the missionary’s hair and even clipped his beard.

Naturally, Father McGrath began to speculate, and it upset his routine of prayers, and the day seemed longer on that account. The next day arrived, and the next day, and eventually his day settled into its schedule again.

A week later, a guard opened the cell door again, and the haircutter clipped his hair and his beard a second time. After the barber left, Father McGrath was just sitting on the floor, starting his daily schedule, when a guard walked up to his cell.

“Roll up your things,” the guard said.

Quickly, the missionary grabbed his possessions tucked in a pile in the back right-hand corner, rolled them up and stepped out. Escorted downstairs, he could hardly walk as he tried to get his legs to descend the stairs. It had been so long since he had actually stepped down that the muscles just weren’t used to it.

Out of Cellblock Number 9, across the yard and into the prisoner processing area, his fingerprints were rolled again. He received his watch, rosary beads, medals, belt, buttons and shoelaces, everything taken from him upon his arrival, including the scapular ripped from his neck.

After an hour or so, he was led outside and into a very fine American car, with curtains drawn on the windows for privacy. Two soldiers, with revolvers, were stationed on either side of him, as he sat in the middle of that beautiful plush car, which raced across Shanghai at a terrific speed to Lokawei District Police Station, where he settled into a private cell in a part of the building that he had not seen before. As he started to sit on the floor, a guard interrupted him.

“No! Sit on that chair!” the guard ordered.

For the first time in 32 months, he was allowed to sit on a chair, and he tried to sit on the chair, but sitting all day on a wooden chair just wasn’t very comfortable. He heard someone complaining, in a cell down the line, and after a few minutes a guard looked in.

“If you want to sit on the floor, you may. If you are not comfortable sitting on the chair, you may sit on the floor,” he said.

Nothing happened that day.

The next morning, after breakfast, another guard, a special guard, entered his cell.

Father McGrath stood up.

“You are going to receive the generosity of the Chinese government. You are going to be expelled. In a few minutes, you will be brought upstairs. You will receive your condemnation. Remember, no awkward questions. When you receive your condemnation, you must stand erect. Do not wear your cap. Keep your hands together. Don’t move. Be respectful. When you leave, you will be allowed to take whatever you want with you. Whatever you don’t want, you may send it back to your mission. Do you have good clothes to wear?”

“How would I have good clothes to wear? I have just what you see on me,” Father McGrath answered.

“Have you no better than that?”

“No.”

Left by himself, just as he finished his third novena to Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, author of “True Devotion to Mary,” two guards entered his cell and escorted him out.

“You are going to be executed,” they taunted.

Brought before a tribunal, he was warned, “Do not talk,” before they read out a page and a half of crimes of which he was accused:

That he had spread throughout China the Legion of Mary, which the Communists had outlawed as a reactionary and secret spy organization;

That he had gone to China at Archbishop Riberi’s order to organize an underground movement among the youth and to disrupt the government’s national church movement;

That he had tried to turn the people of China against the People’s Government;

That he had destroyed the Legion minutes and lists of names to protect himself and others; and

That he was an international spy who tapped out radio messages to America.

Found guilty of all charges, he was told that he would receive clemency from the People’s Government.

In a very solemn voice, the judge pronounced his sentence:

“In the name of the People of China, I expel you from this country. Never to return!”

Shuffled, in chains, from the makeshift courtroom to his final holding cell, it was his last day of imprisonment and his first of freedom.

“What’s the date today?” he asked someone nearby.

“April 28, 1954,” the stranger answered.

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

Escorted downstairs, he was taken outside, and the first person he saw was Father Legrand, looking like a ghost, sunken-cheeked and hollow-eyed, but spirited as ever.

“Are you here?” Father Legrand asked, incredulously. “I was told you had confessed a couple of years ago and that you were home in Ireland.”

Behind him stood Father Godard.

Two guards bearing submachine guns escorted the three, with their little bundles, out of the prison and ordered them into a car, with a guard sitting in the front. On the way to the train station, the three priests shook hands with one another and began to laugh, astonished that they were even allowed to talk.

At the station, they carried their little bundles across the rails and stepped up into a beautiful, clean train, in which they began their journey to Hong Kong, talking freely about everything, all the while two guards kept watch over them.

As they passed through the countryside, Father McGrath looked out the window and blessed himself at the sight of the first church.

“Look at the little Irishman,” Father Godard teased.

When night fell, they were allowed to lie down on the hard bunks. From his upper bunk, Father Godard looked across the aisle at Father McGrath, in his own upper bunk.

“My God. This is terrible,” Father Godard lamented.

His words struck worry in the heart of Father McGrath, who realized:

First, that he had missed his chance at martyrdom, that he was not worthy of martyrdom;

Second, that he was being expelled from his adopted homeland and that the Communists would never again allow him back there to preach;

Third, that he was much more use to The Cause sitting on that floor in the prison than he could be outside, even preaching against the Communists; and

Fourth, that he had to begin life again, all over again, and he really did not know how to begin.

Somewhere during the long train ride, Father Legrand broke down.

“My God, I don’t know what happened to me,” he 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?” Father McGrath asked him.

“I was shackled. 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.”

Many priests, political prisoners, endured torture in prison.

Father Dries van Coillie (1912-98, Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Scheut) received 34 months of psychological and physical torture in a Communist prison in Peking. At one point, he was forced to stand for 21 consecutive days and nights, handcuffed and shackled with 13-pound irons on his legs. Still, he refused to admit that the Legion of Mary was a subversive organization.

Father Albert Sohier (1915-75, Auxiliary Society of Missions) suffered immensely when, during one horrific interrogation, his torturers jumped repeatedly on his back until his spine snapped. Left untreated, he was never the same physically after his wound healed incorrectly. Subsequently, he walked about, stooped over, unable to stand straight.

After his release, he learned a rumor had circulated that he had died in prison. He even received a mortuary card that mourners had printed in his memory.

After the 50-hour train ride, Father McGrath, Father Legrand and Father Godard, escorted by Communists, arrived in Canton at the terminus, on May 2, 1954, a Sunday afternoon, the first Sunday in May.

Headed to Hong Kong, they approached the border, just a little barbed-wire fence at Lo Wu Bridge, a rail-and-foot bridge that spanned the Sham Chun River.

Two or three British policemen, on the Hong Kong side, stood in their polished uniforms of good cloth with polished buttons, looking very fresh, the antithesis of the Communists on the Shenchen (old form of Shenzhen) side, looking so very dour and hard, pointing their Tommy guns at the wall, not at the English side, to avoid accidents. They didn’t smile. Nobody smiled.

The three priests struggled to walk across Lo Wu Bridge, where Father McGrath heard the first decent word of kindness after three years.

“Welcome, Father!” said the British policeman, who brought the freed men into his office, into the beautiful fresh free air and gave them each a glass of beer.

Within five minutes, Father Ambrogio Poletti (1905-73, Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions) arrived on his motorcycle. In charge of Fanling, a parish not very far from the border, he had received word from a policeman that some foreigners had arrived.

Upon his entrance, Father Poletti gave everyone a royal welcome and brought everyone around to coffee and chocolate.

That was the beginning of freedom.