By the time the MEP was founded during the 17th century, French elites were already obsessed with China. Staunch believers were impressed with reports from the Jesuits, including Matteo Ricci and Nicolas Trigaultâs account of their âChristian Expedition to the Kingdom of Chinaâ (1582â1610) published in Latin in 1615 (a French translation of the book was published in 1618). The conversions of high-ranking Chinese scholars such as Paul Xu Guangqi of Shanghai and Leo Li Zhicao of Hangzhou were regarded as assets for the broader conversion of the Chinese people.
The Founding of the MEP
Early in the 17th century, inspired by St. Francis de Sales (1567â1622), the Bishop of Geneva, and the Carmelite reform in Spain, the French Catholics became more active in their effort to promote their faith. The French Roman Catholic priest St. Vincent de Paul (1581â1660) launched a series of missions to serve the poor living in the countryside, while, at the same time, French Jesuit martyrs in Canada earned a great deal of admiration.1 An association of dedicated French Catholics, Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement (Company of the Blessed Sacrament), was subsequently founded among the nobility in 1630. Hearing about the apostolic achievements of the Portuguese, Spanish, and Italians, these lay leaders, who were part of the high social status, wanted the French people to have their share in the work of the mission, particularly in Asia.
The Jesuit Alexander de Rhodes, returning from a mission in the âFar East,â passed through Paris in 1653 and was invited to speak to members of the Assembly of Amity (A.A.), an association of French Catholics that included members from the Jesuits Congregation of the Holy Virgin. De Rhodes called on them to respond to an urgent request that he had made in Rome for the Pope to send church leaders to new converts in the âFar Eastâ to carry out the special task of training priests and ordaining local bishops. De Rhodes believed that having an indigenous clergy was crucial for the churchâs development and survival in the âFar East.â Father Bigot S.J. subsequently proposed that three members of the A.A. offer this service in China and two people, François Pallu from Tours and François de Laval (1623â1708) from Evreux, were later appointed apostolic vicars to Tonkin and Quebec, respectively.
The first cohort of apostolic vicars was recruited from Catholic volunteers and not appointed by secular authorities. One of them, Pierre Lambert de la Motte, a lawyer in Rouen, offered his own fortune to finance the first expedition. In 1658, Pope Alexander VII nominated three apostolic vicars to the âFar Eastâ: Lambert de la Motte for Cochinchina, Francis Pallu for the South China provinces, and Ignace Cotolendi, bishop of Aix en Provence, for Nanjing and North China. Cotolendi died on the way to his post and Lambert de la Motte became the first MEP missionary to reach Asia in 1662. He settled in what was then Siam and created the first MEP seminary in Ayudhia for training Asian priests.
Fujian: The MEPâs First Endeavor and the Chinese Rites Controversy
In 1683, François Pallu had already been on three cross-ocean tours from Europe to Asia over the previous 20 years. The last time he had obtained authorization to enter Taiwan from the Philippines. From there he crossed over the strait to reach the province of Fujian with Maigrot de Crissey ä¸¥ç° (1652â1730). Pallu passed away in Muyang (Mindong) on October 29, 1684. On February 5, 1687, Pope Innocent XI nominated Maigrot de Crissey, then the de facto administrator of the China mission, to be the apostolic vicar of Fujian Province.
The MEPâs endeavor in Fujian, marked by the so-called Chinese Rites Controversy, concerns a conflict over the practice of the worship of ancestors in the Chinese culture. Before the MEPâs arrival in Fuzhou, the Jesuit Aleni from Brescia (1582â1649) was able to maintain peaceful dialogue with the local authorities. Following the Jesuitsâ established policy with reference to the spirit of Matteo Ricci, Aleni allowed converts to practice traditional rites honoring Confucius and other ancient religious figures from the past. In opposition to the Jesuits, other religious orders in the Fujian province, such as the Dominicans, Franciscans, and Augustines objected to this practice because they believed that it was steeped in superstition.
Opponents insisted that the practice of ancestor worship challenged the integrity of their faith and that Jesus Christ was the only savior through his sacrifice on the cross to witness Godâs mercy. If Confucian norms of filial piety were considered to be sacred, the practice of the Confucian rites would be an act of submission to a patriarchal society. In the theological debate, the Jesuits stressed the requirements of the incarnation of Christ while other missionary institutes heralded the redemption of Christ through his sacrifice, for the forgiveness of sin. A serious conflict developed from a power struggle between the different missionary institutes, a division that spread among the Chinese converts as well as those who, out of loyalty, took the position of their relative masters.
Maigrot de Crissey, who was residing in Fuzhou, baptized 80 converts in 1687 and 75 converts in 1688. Two other MEP missionaries were active in the neighboring Xinghua area (Changle and Putian). But the conflicts among the neophytes deeply disturbed the missionaries. As an apostolic vicar representing the Roman authority, Maigrot de Crissey had to take a stand, and therefore, as a theologian educated at Sorbonne University, he believed in the necessity of conducting a serious inquiry into the theological and practical aspects of this quarrel. He spent years studying the popular religions in Fujian. He also wrote many volumes about the subject that are kept in the Archives des Missions Ãtrangères de Paris in Paris, awaiting further study.
On March 26, 1693, Maigrot issued a clear decree forbidding Chinese converts to practice the traditional rites of ancestral worship. This measure provoked an upheaval during the following Holy Week. The faithful who had been baptized by the Jesuit Aleni violently opposed his decision. In the wake of the turmoil, a MEP missionary, Nicolas Charmot (1655â1714), was sent to Rome in 1695 to resolve the dispute. He remained there until his death in 1714, defending the interdict against the maneuvers of the Jesuits and leaving behind eight volumes of manuscripts dealing with this matter. Charmot struggled to restore the authority of the apostolic vicars that was being seriously challenged by the Portuguese and the Jesuits.
The arguments over the practice of the Chinese rites were ended by Pope Clement XIâs condemnation of the Chinese and Malabar rites, in a decree of November 20, 1704. However, in China, the disputes worsened and finally resulted in a century-long prohibition placed on Catholic missions. On December 4, 1705, Bishop Charles de Tournon (1668â1710), a papal legate to the East Indies and China, was received with due solemnity by the Chinese Emperor Kangxi. Inquiring into the religious situation in China, de Tournon listened to the reports from the French Jesuit Claude de Visdelou, who disagreed with the policy of his Jesuit Society in stating that the Chinese religion was incompatible with the Christian belief in a transcendent and personal God. Upon learning about the debate, Emperor Kangxi invited Maigrot de Crissey to join him at his Summer Palace in Chengde to clarify his position on the practice of the Chinese traditional rites, because Maigrotâs clear stance against the Chinese rites had angered the emperor.
On December 17, 1706, an imperial decree required all Catholic missionaries in China to sign an imperial permit (piao) stating that they did not oppose the practice of the traditional Chinese rites and would follow âthe rules of Matteo Ricci.â On February 7, 1707, de Tournon published a statement in Nanjing forbidding all missionaries to sign the piao ordered by the Emperor. Immediately expelled from China, de Tournon spent his last years as a prisoner in Macao. Supporting his stand, Pope Clement XI made him a cardinal, and in 1715 condemnation of the Chinese Rites was reinforced by Clement XIâs bull, Exilla die. In response to Clementâs declaration, Emperor Kangxi issued a decree in 1721 that banned Christian missions in China. In 1724, the successive Emperor Yongzheng (r. 1722â1735) further proscribed the practice of Catholicism, or the Heavenly Lord Sect as it was called in Chinese. The persecution escalated in the following decades, and while Emperor Qianlong appreciated Jesuit Giuseppe Castiglione (1688â1766)âs artwork as well as western technologies, he also reinforced anti-Christian policies in 1737.
Sichuan: A Significant Development of the Local Church during the Prohibition
Before the prohibition, the MEP made some progress with its mission in China. In October 1696, Maigrot de Crissey was appointed titular bishop of Conon. Philibert Leblanc, appointed apostolic vicar of Yunnan, had entered China in 1683, at the same time as Pallu. Leblanc reached the remote inland province in 1702. In December 1696, Pope Innocent XII appointed Artus de Lionne (1655â1713) bishop of Rosalia and apostolic vicar of Sichuan. He was the son of Hugues de Lionne, the French ambassador to Rome and the then Foreign minister for the French King Louis XIV. Having committed himself to the service of the foreign missions, de Lionne left France in 1681 for Siam, where he became a coadjutor of Mgrs. Laneau. Escaping from his political troubles in Siam in 1689, he moved to China and created two new missions in the Anhui province at Guichi and Wuhu. In 1700, he was consecrated as a bishop in Fuzhou by Maigrot de Crissey. Lionne soon recruited four priests for his vicariate. In 1700, he entrusted two MEP priests, John Basset ç½æ¥æ (1662â1707) and Jean François Martin de la Baluère æ¢å®ä» (1668â1715), to work in the town of Chengdu in West Sichuan. Two Vincentians (âLazaristsâ in French, because the mission was founded near St. Lazarus Hospital), the Italian Ludovico Appiani ç¢å¤©ç¥¥ (1663â1732) and Johann Mullener ç©å¤©æ© (1673â1742), who had been dispatched to China by the Propaganda Fide to open a seminary, also offered their services to him. Seeking possibilities in a remote area of China, de Lionne entrusted Appiani and Mullener with Chongqing and Eastern Sichuan, and, because of these appointments, two missionary societies, the MEP and the Vincentians shared the responsibility of working on behalf of the mission in Sichuan.
Both societies were concerned with the training of Chinese priests. They had to face a major obstacle because of the extensive use of Latin in the religious rites of the church. Despite the principle of adaptation to local cultures clearly expressed in the 1659 Instructions, the Propaganda took a definite stand and supported the use of Latin in the liturgy. However, Jean Basset strongly favored the use of Chinese. After arriving in Chengdu in 1702, Basset wrote a long report entitled âAdvice on the China Mission.â Regretting the sad state of the church in Sichuan after so many past efforts to meld it into Chinese society, he believed that the only way to improve the situation was to translate the Bible into the Chinese language and authorize the use of Chinese in the liturgy. He admired the Chinese system of moral education and attributed its power to how Confucian classics were being taught in China, and he believed that converts would have a stronger belief in their faith if they could read the Bible in their native language. With the help of the Chinese scholar Johan Xu å¾è¥ç¿°, he began to translate the New Testament; the entire work, except for the book of the Hebrews and the Apocalypse, was completed before his death in 1707.
While waiting for a reply to his requests from Rome, Basset recruited three young Catholic children while he was on a trip to the Shaanxi province and invited his solidus La Baluèreto to help him train these children for the priesthood. La Baluère used both Latin and Chinese languages when teaching these boys. One of the children, André Ly or Li Ande æå®å¾·, was a talented linguist and learned Latin easily. He soon recognized the importance of Latin and understood that it was not just a tool for gaining access to the sources of theology, but, more importantly, that Chinese priests needed to know Latin so that they could enjoy the same status as western priests.
In 1717, seven Chinese seminarians, including André Ly, were sent to Siam to the MEP-run General College, which because of the influx of newcomers from China soon became prosperous. In 1718, the school had 50 students who studied philosophy, theology, literature, the arts, and Latin and Asian languages. Their success aroused suspicion and the superior André Roost (?â1729), who was accused of Jansenism, was recalled to Paris. The young theologian André Ly proved his mastery of Latin and wrote a letter to Rome defending his superior against the vicious accusations of heresy. Ly had been ordained a priest in 1725 at the age of 33. Together with another young Chinese priest, Antony Tang, he finally joined the MEP, where he had received training over the last 10 years. After one year of service in the college, Ly moved to Guangzhou, where the MEP procurator, Antoine Guignes, sent him to the Fujian Mission.
In 1732, André Ly returned to Sichuan. He had to face the opposition of Mullener, then the Apostolic Vicar of Sichuan, who had managed to remain alone in Chengdu and wanted to keep the province under the supervision of the Vincentians. In 1733, Joachim Enjobert de Martiliat from the MEP arrived in Sichuan and started to work closely with André Ly. Both of them were resolute in their desire to find a way for the MEP to establish itself in the province. In 1737, a reply from Rome authorized Martiliat and the MEP to remain in Sichuan. Mullener proceeded to entrust André Ly with the districts where he had found a way to promote the MEP. Ly, who was settled in Pengshan, together with Martiliat and the catechist Lin Chang (Zhang Feng 張鳳) extended the reach of the MEP in communities around the town of Kiating (Leshan) and further south in Suifu (Yibin). In June 1741, Martiliat received Romeâs letter appointing him apostolic vicar of Yunnan. Mullener ordained him a bishop in the following month. However, Mullener passed away in 1742 and Martiliat remained in Sichuan. Given that only a few assistants were available, Martiliat relied on the help of catechists and the Christian Virgins to carry out the mission of the MEP and perform other duties. In addition to monitoring their pastoral responsibilities, he observed their training and set rules for their spiritual life. The virgins, who could not take their vows of chastity until the age of 25, remained with their families.
In 1747, Martiliat obtained official approval from Rome for the rules he had written governing the life and functions of the virgins. The catechists performed two types of service: as the head of a community as a huizhang (æé·) or traveling as an assistant to the missionaries.2 Their task was demanding and fraught with danger. Some local customs related to the marriage of children or the practice of money lending at a high rate of interest were not acceptable to Chinese converts. Their refusal to take part in traditional rituals forced them to suffer denunciation, be imprisoned, and undergo severe beatings. Owing to the persecutions in the years from 1746 to 1747, Martiliat had to leave China, and André Ly therefore took over the responsibilities of the church in Sichuan. Anxious to fulfill all aspects of his mission, Ly started to write a diary in Latin and submitted it as an annual report to the MEP procurator in Macao, and in return, he received the necessary subsidies for the mission. His diary covers the 15 years of his apostolate in the Sichuan Province from June 15, 1747, to the end of 1763. In 1749, two Chinese priests, Luke Li and Steven Xu, both ordained in Macao in 1747, came to assist him. Growing up during the difficult years of the Chinese Rites Controversy, when many foreign missionaries were either persecuted or expelled, André Ly became a significant local priest who left more than a 700-page diary in Latin about his life and activities as a priest in Sichuan.
On January 8, 1753, the MEP took over the supervision of the Sichuan province, and a new leader, Francis Pottier ç¯ä¾è (1726â1792), a young French priest ordained in Tours in the same year, was assigned to the Sichuan Church. He arrived in Sichuan in 1756 at the age of 30. Appointed provicar, he took charge of the flock of 5,000 to 6,000 Catholics who were scattered in different parts of the province. In 1767, he was nominated bishop of Agathopolis and apostolic vicar of Sichuan. His episcopal consecration took place on December 10, 1769, in Xiâan, Shaanxi, where he resided temporarily due to the unrest in the area.
A few years later a seminary was established in Longxi é¾æºª, North Yunnan, close to its border with Sichuan; however, the seminary was relocated to Luoranggou in Sichuan, which was situated across from the border. From 1780 to 1814, 40 priests graduated from the seminary. To escape the persecutions in Sichuan and Yunnan, seminarians frequently traveled back and forth across the border. In the spirit of the Monita ad Missionarios (directives written by François Pallu and Lambert de Lamotte à Ayuthia in 1664), Pottier selected candidates for the priesthood among the full-time catechists including three Chinese catechists, Benedict Sun, John Baptist Jiang, and Augustin Zhao, who accompanied the MEP missionary Jean Martin Moÿe during his pastoral visits. Benedict was ordained in 1777, after serving as a catechist for four years, and John Baptist and Augustin were ordained in 1781, after approximately one year of preparation at the Longxi seminary.
Moÿe came from Lorraine, France, where he founded a congregation of the âSisters of Providenceâ for the education of children. Soon after his arrival in 1773, Mgr. Pottier appointed him provicar for Eastern Sichuan and Guizhou. His contacts with the Chinese communities made him aware of the potential of the Chinese Virgins to assist him, despite their many responsibilities for living a spiritual life. With the help of the virgins, he opened several schools for girls, which at that time was an innovative undertaking in China. Fearing negative reactions from the populace, Pottier wrote to Rome seeking advice. The Propaganda responded with a clear answer in an Instruction dated April 29, 1784, stating that, âschools for girls that are under the direction of the Catholic Virgins, have been approved.â3
Moÿe was also responsible for another more controversial initiative. Inspired by the views of the French Vincentian Pierre Lollet, he considered the baptism of babies to be essential for the salvation of their souls and thousands of babies died in Sichuan soon after birth during this time. Moÿe trained women to be baptizers of dying babies. This apostolate developed to such an extent that people mistook the rite of pouring the water of baptism over the baby as a curse that caused the death of the babies, and Pottier therefore had to moderate this practice, which he did after obtaining the support of Rome. Moÿe also supported opening pharmacies run by active baptizers that soon became an important feature of the mission of Guizhou.
In 1783, Pottier consecrated a coadjutor, Jean Didier de Saint Martin å ä¹ç¦® (1743â1801), who, after being arrested, was expelled from China. However, he later managed to return in 1792 after Pottier had died. Saint Martin made sure that he would be succeeded by Gabriel Taurin Dufresse, another coadjutor whom he had consecrated in 1800 as bishop of Tabraca. Dufresse began to serve in Sichuan after his arrival in 1776. After his arrest and imprisonment in Beijing in 1784, he was sent to Macao and the Philippines. He secretly returned to China on a French boat, arriving in Chengdu in 1789. After the death of Saint Martin in 1801, he was in charge of the entire province.
Despite the lack of security and many setbacks, the Sichuan Church became prosperous. In 1756, the church had 4,000 Catholics and two Chinese priests. In 1802, the church had 40,000 faithful and 16 Chinese priests. The pastoral experience during the 18th century gave rise to many issues. A pastoral directory had to be established for the regulation of a Catholic way of life and administration of the sacraments. In September 1803, Bishop Dufresse convened the first Chinese synod in Chongqingzhou å´æ ¶å·, 40 kilometers west of Chengdu. Thirteen Chinese priests and two French missionaries took part in it for the full month of September. The decisions made during the synod primarily related to having a meaningful administration of the sacraments within the context of the special local conditions. It recommended diligence in spiritual service and prudence in temporal matters, and its directives set up guidelines for the apostolate in China that lasted until the Council of Shanghai in 1924.
Despite the tolerance of the local authorities, imperial decrees had to be observed by provincial leaders. In 1815, with the repression of Christianity imposed by Emperor Jiaqing, Augustin Zhao, who had performed highly successful work among the Lolo population in Yunnan, was denounced and jailed. He died in prison on January 27, 1815. Betrayed by a young Catholic, Bishop Dufresse was beheaded in Chengdu in the same year as Augustin Zhaoâs martyrdom. Both martyrs were beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1900 and canonized in Rome by Pope John Paul II on October 1, 2000.
Guizhou: Mission Expansion and Holy Martyrs
In the province of Guizhou, the repression of Christianity was severe because Christians assimilated into several subversive sects and, in particular, into the White Lotus Sect. When Pottier visited Guizhou in 1756, he met some 60 Chinese Catholics, and while he was a bishop in 1769, he invited Georges Alary (1731â1817) to Guizhou. Moÿe arrived in Guizhou at an opportune moment in 1773, when Alary was recalled to Paris to be the director of the MEP seminary. There were then 300 Catholics assembling around four main stations. In May 1774, Moÿe and his catechists were arrested and led to a tribunal in Wuchuan, where they were beaten and jailed for about 10 days and were freed on Pentecost Sunday. In 1774, Dufresse urged the Chinese priest, Matthias Luo, to take care of the mission in Guizhou. Luo sent his catechists to Guizhou who informed him of the presence of some 80 Catholics in the Zunyi area who had been instructed in the faith by Yao Dachuan, a Chinese Catholic merchant.
In Longping, near Zunyi, Peter Wu Guosheng å³åç (1768â1814), a hostel keeper, helped with the baptism of at least 120 converts. During the 1812 persecution, Peter was arrested and condemned to death by strangulation. Catholics in the region spoke of many miracles due to his intercession. In Guiyang, a certain Wang, the son of a silk trader, came back from Beijing, having obtained the title of juren in the national exams. He met Catholics in Beijing and brought some Catholic books back with him when he returned home. A trade partner of his father, Zhang Dapeng é·å¤§éµ¬ (1754â1815), who was 40 years old, was in quest of the truth as a Daoist monk of the Clear Water Sect. After studying a catechism book, he converted to Christianity. Baptized by Matthias Luo, he was named Joseph and later became a passionate catechist. At the time of the 1812 persecution, Zhang moved to Sichuan and Bishop Dufresse, measuring the strength of his faith, advised him to return to Guiyang and continue his work there. Returning to Guiyang and living in hiding, he still managed to achieve nine conversions. In 1815, betrayed by the younger brother of his wife, he was executed by strangulation.
Two other outstanding Catholics, namely, Peter Liu Wenyuan åæå (1760â1834) and Joachim Hao Kaizhi ééæ (1782â1839), were condemned to exile. Peter was sent to Heilongjiang and Joachim to Yili and later Xinjiang. Tianzhuxiejiao, the infamous words that meant âEvil cult of the Lord of Heaven,â were painted on their cheeks. Freed after years of suffering, they were arrested again and strangulated, Peter in 1834 and Joachim in 1839. Peter Wu, Joseph Zhang, Peter Liu, and Joachim Haoare are honored as the four pillars that support the Guizhou Church. They were beatified by Pope Leo XIII on May 27, 1900, and canonized by Pope John Paul II on October 1, 2000.
Until 1849, the Guizhou mission was under the administration of Sichuan. Created as an Apostolic Vicariate on March 27, 1846, by Pope Gregory XVI, Guizhou separated from Sichuan during the Episcopal consecration of the Apostolic Vicar Etienne Albrand (1805â1853) on March 18, 1849. Etienne Albrand left France in 1832 and gained experience in the Chinese mission in Singapore and then in Bangkok. Sent to Guizhou, he arrived in Guiyang in June 1847. A delegation from Rome that included Bishop Jacques-Léonard Perocheau é¦¬ä¼¯ç¾ (1787â1861) selected him to be the Apostolic Vicar. Before his death in 1853, Albrand chose the young missionary Louis Simon Faurie è¡ç¼ç (1824â1871) as his successor. Newly arrived and still learning the language, Faurie was unable to assume his duties. Hubert Perny ç«¥æç®, who could write in Chinese and communicate with local officials, was subsequently elected as the administrator of the Guizhou mission.
Perny was exceptional among his fellow missionaries of that time and known for his love of Chinese culture and proficiency in the Chinese language. While in charge of the Guizhou mission from April 1853 to August 1860, he opened a seminary in Luchongguan in the northern suburb of Guiyang. He wanted the seminarians to be educated in Chinese as well as in Latin, and he published an anthology of Chinese proverbs with Christian interpretations. In 1868, Perny returned to Paris and became an early contributor to French sinology. He completed a French-Latin Chinese dictionary and four years later, he added an appendix to the dictionary. This work was well known in Europe and recognized as an encyclopedia of Chinese civilization. His contribution to Chinese botany is also significant and a plant bearing his name now stands in the MEP garden in Paris.
Back in Guizhou in 1855, Perny opened a house in Guiyang for the Chinese virgins and sent Agathe Linzhao, one of the virgins, on a mission to be among the Miao people. In 1858, Agathe was arrested and beheaded. In October 1860, the seminarians moved to a refuge located in Qingyan in the south of Guiyang. Later, two seminarians were beheaded along with their cook, Martha Wang, who chose to die with them. During these troubled years, Faurie was consecrated a bishop in 1860, and other priests often escaped to the Luchongguan seminary and hid on the top of the hill behind the rock statue of Mary. Reciting the litanies of the Holy Mother, they prayed and repeated three times at the end, âCausa nostae leticiae, ora pro nobis.â The place where they hid was dedicated to Our Lady of Bliss and the name of the hill was changed to âShengmushan,â or the Holy Mother Mount. It is the place where the origins of a local pilgrimage are solemnized on every eighth day of September up to the present time. The Guizhou mission suffered a new blow on February 18, 1862, when the French missionary John Peter Néel (1832â1862) was beheaded along with two catechists and a new convert. A virgin from Sichuan, Lucy Yi æè²ç¾, was executed the following day. The five heads were hung on the city wall of Kaiyang, but they did not scare away the local Catholics who managed to collect their relics during the night. Pope John-Paul II later canonized the five victims on October 1, 2000.
In the 19th century, Catholics in France usually learned about these courageous missionaries and Chinese converts through the âAnnales de la Propagation de la foi,â which publicized the horrific deeds that had been perpetrated on the martyrs in Asia and elsewhere. The martyrs were glorified within a musical framework, e.g., Charles Gounod composed a Chant des Martyrs for the MEP in Paris, invoking an enthusiasm among young missionaries who had departed for the âFar Eastâ to die as martyrs.
Manchuria: A Springboard to Korea, 1838â1949
On September 1, 1827, the Propaganda invited the MEP to take charge of the mission to Korea. A number of missionaries immediately responded. Barthélémy Bruguière (1792â1835), then passing through Macao, expressed his interest in going to Korea. An apostolic vicariate was erected on September 9, 1831, in Korea, and Bruguière was nominated as its first apostolic vicar. Yi Seung-hun, usually regarded as one of the earliest Catholic converts in Korea, received his baptism in China in 1784. The first cohort of French missionaries planned to enter Korea from northeast China. Pierre-Philibert Maubant (1803â1839) from Bayeux in Normandy joined Bruguière in Macao and they both went to Korea, although Maubant had been ordered to go to Sichuan. The two pioneers traveled across China from the south to the north, each taking a different route, and finally met in Mongolia. They spent a year in Xiwanzi, then under the supervision of the Vincentian Mission, to prepare for their journey to Korea.
In October 1835, Bruguière made his first attempt to enter Korea but suddenly died before reaching the border. However, Maubant succeeded in secretly entering the âhermit kingdom.â After two years of pastoral service in the Shandong province, James Chastan (1803â1839) from the Penang General College managed to join him in January 1837. In December 1838, a new apostolic vicar, Laurent Imbert èä¸äº¨ (1796â1839), who had already spent 12 years in Sichuan, joined them, built a seminary of the Annunciation in the mountains of Muping, and directed it for five years. During the persecution, these three French missionaries in Korea decided to surrender to the anti-Christian authorities to prevent a massacre of the local Catholics. They were executed on September 21, 1839.
Owing to extreme difficulties encountered in trying to enter Korea, missionaries were often forced to retreat to the neighboring province of Manchuria in China. To better prepare for the Korean mission, the MEP asked the Propaganda to authorize them to work in the territory in Manchuria, which was entirely under the supervision of the Vincentians. On November 8, 1838, the Propaganda created the Apostolic Vicariate of Manchuria and Mongolia in favor of the MEP. Emmanuel Verrolles (1805â1878), a new MEP apostolic vicar for Manchuria, was appointed on December 12, 1838, succeeding Imbert as superior of the Muping seminary in Sichuan. His Episcopal consecration took place on November 8, 1840, by a certain Salvetti, an Italian Franciscan, in Taiyuan (Shanxi), which was located halfway to his new mission post. In the same year, due to disputes with the Vincentians, a decision was made to divide the Manchuria-Mongolia mission into two, with the MEP in charge of the Manchuria mission and the Vincentians in charge of the Mongolia mission.
The MEP in Manchuria planned to establish a seminary for the training of priests in the hope that some of them might be sent to Korea in the near future. The Catholic village of the Eight Families or Xiaobajiazi, formed with Catholic migrants from Shandong, soon became a hotbed of activities for priests and sisters. Destroyed by the Boxers in 1900, the village was rebuilt by Joseph Cubizolles (1863â1936) with all of its Catholic institutions intact. Besides the seminarians, Cubizolles also supported the novitiate of the Chinese Virgins of the Holy Heart of Mary. In March 1907, Bishop Peter Lalouyer (1850â1923) entrusted Cubizolles with the new Catholic community of Jilin. Cubizolles established a major seminary in Jilin from 1912 to 1928. In a cave at the foot of a nearby hill, he opened a Lourdes grotto that was similar to the original one in Lourdes in France. On October 22, 1923, Costantini, the apostolic delegate in China, blessed this Lourdes grotto and it became the site of a famous pilgrimage and remains so today. In Jilin during the same period, another great missionary, Lucien Gibert ç´æ·å¾· (1888â1968), conducted a thorough inquiry into the history and culture of Manchuria. From 1914 to 1934, he completed a dictionary of over one thousand pages that was later published by Nazareth, the MEP printing house in Hong Kong.4
In 1898, North Manchuria and South Manchuria were distinguishable from each other; in the south, the mission extended from Port Arthur to Jilin in the north. The vast region of north Manchuria extended from Harbin to the Amour River in Heilongjiang, sharing its border with Siberian Russia. The size of the north mission was double that of the south, but, until the division of the mission in 1898, the center of the Manchurian Mission remained in Shenyang, the capital city of Liaoning province and the heart of Christian Manchuria. The most significant achievement of the north mission was the âMission St. Josephâ or the Catholic community of Haibei, founded by Henri Roubin (1871â1935). This Catholic community attracted a number of Catholic families that had been isolated in remote areas and exposed to many dangers, especially after the Boxer attack. Haibei soon developed into a dynamic and important Catholic community in northeast China. Archbishop Yu Bin (1901â1978), the first Chinese archbishop of Nanjing, had been an altar boy in Mission St. Joseph.
Ernst Trecul (1879â1904) from a Perche village in the Chartres Diocese was another noteworthy MEP missionary in the Heilongjiang province. He joined the MEP in 1900 and left for North Manchuria in 1903. When he arrived in September, Bishop Choulet sent him to the Catholic village of Daqingshan (the great green mount). He learned the local dialect and lived there with 300 Chinese Catholics. Gangs of former Boxers called honghouzi (red monkeys) often roamed around the area, ransacking and looting, despite the control of the Russians in the region. Treculâs village was attacked on October 14, 1904. According to local legend, Trecul, seeing a honghouzi aiming his gun at one of the Chinese Catholics, took hold of the gun and saved the life of his parishioner. The bandits immediately shot him and then fled on their horses. The village honors Treculâs sacrifice to this day and built a monument in his memory.
The cathedral of Shenyang (Moukden) was destroyed during the Boxer attack when Bishop Guillon took refuge with his priests, religious sisters, and a group of Chinese converts. The bishop and all of those with him were slaughtered by the Boxers who then set fire to the church. Paul Lamasse (1869â1952), a gifted Alsatian expert in architecture, music, linguistics, and photography, later supervised the reconstruction of the cathedral. In 1921, Lamasse published the New Manual of the Chinese Written Language in Hong Kong. He also planted vineyards and imported goats from Switzerland for the production of cheese. In 1935, he was appointed the director of the MEPâs printing press by Bishop Blois.
The Manchukuo Era: Church and State during the War
The Mukden Incident that occurred on September 18, 1931, opened the door to the invasion of imperialist Japan into China. Blaming Chinese soldiers for an explosion that they themselves had provoked, the Japanese had occupied three major cities in ManchuriaâMoukden, Changchun, and Jilinâwithin a few days on the pretext of protecting the railway line. Japan wanted to secure access to Manchuriaâs economic resources and, to legitimize their hold over Manchuria, created a Chinese puppet government under the authority of the Chinese emperor Puyi, who had previously been forced to abdicate. A new Manchukuo Empire was officially introduced on March 9, 1932; however, the Society of Nations refused to recognize the new state.
The Catholic missions in Manchukuo found themselves cut off from the apostolic delegate, Marius Zanin, who had been appointed in 1934 by the nationalist government in Nanjing. The MEP missionaries had to resolve a crucial problem: all schoolchildren were required to perform the Confucian rituals that had been restored as an act of civil loyalty. However, these rituals violated the Churchâs interdict. The bishop of Jilin and Changchun (renamed Xinjing æ°äº¬, as the new capital), Auguste Ernest Gaspais (1884â1952), asked Rome to send an apostolic delegate to solve this matter with the Japanese. However, the Holy See did not recognize the Manchukuo government, so the Propaganda appointed Gaspais as a ârepresentative of the Holy See with the Manchukuo government for the Catholic missions,â a title that did not have any diplomatic value. Despite this situation, the Japanese treated Bishop Gaspais with all of the usual honors as a nuncio. Responding to a request from Rome, a Japanese general provided Gaspais with a letter stating that the Confucian ritual had no religious meaning. In 1935, the famous interdict on Confucian rites was abrogated for Manchukuo, and, in 1939, this permit was extended to all of the people of China, a process that took place under pressure from the Japanese imperialists. At that time, Rome greatly feared the inroads being made by the communists, and, until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, it believed that Japan would guarantee the stability of Manchuria.
A side effect of the crisis was the consecration of the MEP Charles Lemaire æ åæ° (1900â1995) as the coadjutor of Gaspais in the Jilin vicariate. Lemaire assumed his responsibilities with great dedication. He took care of the seminary until it was transferred to Changchun, and he was placed in charge of the Congregation of the Assumption. Lemaire also took care of the sisters of the Holy Family. He was sent back to Paris against his wishes in 1946 by order of the Propaganda Fide. The Paris directors had to replace the general superior of the society who had retired because of health reasons before the end of his term. At the following General Assembly of 1950, Lemaire was elected general superior of the MEP.
The MEP and the French Protectorate
Rome selected the first apostolic vicars from among the French Catholic missionaries. They were accountable to the Pope and received their orders directly from the Propaganda Fide in Rome. This process had to be approved by the French King, Louis XIV, and strong financial support was obtained from the French nobility. The French gained a sense of pride from these actions, which was a significant factor for the missionaries. From the beginning to the mid-19th century, these patriotic feelings did not adversely affect the accord between the missionaries and Chinese converts. Living with Chinese farmers in remote villages, the missionaries shared their happy and unhappy moments and did their best to improve local living conditions by providing medical care, education, housing, and road construction, and by introducing new agricultural practices to the farmers.
The Opium War in 1840 marked the beginning of a colonial era in which European countries became more advanced because of the industrial revolution and expanded their power on a broader scale. Before the Opium War, European ambitions for China had been constrained by the occupation of Macao by the Portuguese. With the armed irruption of the British fleet that bombarded Guangzhou to protect their opium trade, the western world forced open the door to Chinaâs market. In the following decades, the late Qing government signed a series of treaties with the western powers that resulted in privileges gradually being conferred on the Christian missionaries in China. The missions in China started to be involved in the diplomatic and political tensions between China and the West as these treaties went into effect. At first, the treaties only prescribed security for foreign missionaries in the port cities that engaged in international trade. France expanded its protocol for providing protection to the missionaries in other large and inland cities after the execution of the MEP missionary August Chapdelaine 馬賴 in Guangxi. Invited by Miao converts in remote villages to join them for the celebration of Christmas and Holy Week, Chapdelaine ignored the treaty rules that called for limiting the presence of foreigners in large cities. He was arrested but was soon released due to the sympathy the governorâs wife felt for the Christians. However, in the following year, a new governorâs hostility to Christians was far more severe. Accused of numerous crimes in the tribunal, Chapdelaine was tortured and condemned to death along with two companions and his catechist, Agnes. Bishop Guillemin and the French consul in Guangzhou received an account of the horrific acts that had occurred. Both the bishop and consul reported the case to Napoléon III and the incident became a casus belli for the so-called Second Opium War. The French emperor decided to join his French forces with the British troops, who were already engaged in a war in China. The Tianjin Treaty signed between France and Qing China imposed a heavy indemnity on the Chinese government.
Two years later in 1860, French and English forces looted and set fire to Yuanmingyuan, a famous imperial palace in Beijing. At a subsequent convention, an agreement that increased the rights of the French protectorate over the missions went into effect and the Vincentians, the MEP, and other missionary institutes developed their own procedures throughout China. Missionaries could travel in China with a French passport and Chinese converts also benefited by having some privileges given to them. After committing an offense, converts would be judged by a French tribunal, which was generally more lenient than a Chinese one.
These measures generally provoked hostility in the Chinese population. Chinese converts to Christianity were often viewed as traitors, and in the provinces, local prefects tended to ignore the formal conventions. Such was the case in Guizhou when a young general, Dai Luzhi, rebuffed the missionary, Jean Pierre Néel (1832â1862). When Néel proffered his French passport, the general said, âI know, I know, this passport has been delivered by your government, not by ours. It has no validity for usâ5 and Neel was beheaded in Kaiyang on February 16, 1862. The Guiyang yamen (tribunal) was destroyed to make room for a new church dedicated to the blessed martyrs of Guizhou and beatified by Pope Pius X on May 2, 1909.
The Franco-Chinese war of 1883 heightened popular resentment. Matthew Berthollet (1865â1898) was slaughtered in the Guangxi province. In May 1895, riots in Sichuan destroyed schools, churches, and orphanages. Bishop Marie Julien Dunand (1841â1915), the apostolic vicar in Chengdu, called on a French vessel for help in suppressing the riots. The French consul in Beijing, Sir August Gerard, later obtained considerable compensation for the Chengdu mission and the viceroy, Liu Bingcheng, was removed from his post.
The popular reaction against foreign enterprises, including the missions, found its main outlet in the Boxer Uprising in 1900. More than 30,000 Christians were slaughtered and eight foreign armies united to crush the upheaval. A decade later, the Wuhan insurrection led to a proclamation of the Republic in October 1911, which marked the fall of the Qing Dynasty. Ernest P. Young argued that during this period âChristian churches in China became part of a system of foreign privilege and power politics.â6
The Tibet Mission: A Costly Challenge
In 1846, the Propaganda Fide invited Charles François Langlois (1767â1851), the superior of the MEP, to take charge of a new mission in a Tibetan territory. This request preceded the attempt by two Vincentians, Ãvariste Régis Huc (1813â1860) and Joseph Gabet (1808â1853), to initiate a missionary presence in Tibet. They managed to reach the capital of Lhasa and stayed for only one month, February 1846. They were unable to stay any longer and had to rely on diplomatic strategies to return without being attacked. The exotic lands of Tibet, however, attracted a number of daring young missionaries in Paris who were eager to pursue an adventurous expedition, as they had demonstrated in Korea. An immediate problem for these young explorers was to decide how and in what way to enter this forbidden land: through India or China. Two young missionaries, namely, Nicolas Krick (1819â1854) and Augustin Bourry (1826â1854), chose a daring itinerary through north India despite it being under the threat of hostile mountain tribes. Both missionaries were put to death as soon as they reached Tibet on September 1, 1854. It appears that a better option would have been to approach Tibet through the Chinese provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan, where a number of Tibetans already lived. In response to a request from Chauveau, Rome created an apostolic vicariate of Tibet to cover these Tibetan-Chinese areas. Charles Renou (1812â1863), disguised as a merchant, first reached Tatsienlou (Kangding) in March 1846. He was recognized and sent back to Guangzhou. Renou, a nominated apostolic prefect in December 1853, however, opened the first mission in Tibetan territory at Bonga. His fellow traveler, August Desgodins (1826â1913), built a chapel and presbytery in Yerkalo, Tibet. However, he was chased by the local lamas in 1873, and he left the mission center of Tatsienlou in 1880 to explore the southern border of Tibet in North Yunnan.
Knowledgeable about the customs and language of Tibet, Desgodins moved to Hong Kong in 1894 and wrote a Tibetan-Latin-French Dictionary published by the Nazareth Printing Press. In 1866, Chauveau invited Jules Dubernard (1840â1906) to take charge of the station of Tse-kou (Cekou) in northern Yunnan. Dubernard lived in Tse-kou for 40 years and had a successful life. Slaughtered by the local lamas in 1905, the Catholics built a tomb for him near the Church of Cekou, which survives until today.
Felix Biet (1838â1901), the successor to Chauveau in Tibet, had a strong scientific interest in the study of plants and animals. He took an active role in botanical and zoological research and provided his colleagues in Paris with samples from the Tibetan area. Bietâs successor, John Soulié (1858â1905), while offering the Tibetan population all kinds of services, particularly medical, became a well-known botanist among Paris scientists. Within a decade, Soulié sent over 7,000 plant samples to the museums in Paris. He was unfortunately shot down at Yaregong on April 14, 1905, by order of the Tibetan lamas. In 1936, the North East Tibetan region was transferred from the MEP to the Swiss mission of Grand St. Bernard, the Canons Regular of St. Augustin.
Yunnan: The MEP and Ethnic Minorities
After the mid-19th century, the MEP missionaries, under the protection of various treaties, not only prospered in the remote villages of China but also found welcoming people among the ethnic minorities living in its borderlands. This was the case for over 20 non-Han ethnicities residing in the Yunnan province. In June 1741, when Martiliat was appointed Apostolic Vicar of Yunnan, the mission was in a weak position. He did not actually move there, and he had to leave China in 1747. The Catholics in Yunnan were governed by Sichuan until 1840 when a new apostolic vicariate was created and put in charge of the MEP from 1907 to 1933. The apostolic vicar in the province was Charles de Gorostarzu (1860â1933), who was from the Basco people, an ethnic minority in France. He was inclined to support the enterprises of the MEP that involved the Chinese ethnic minorities, and when he arrived in Yunnan in 1886, his first post was in Longxi, where he connected with the Lolo people. Paul Vial (1855â1917), well known for the enlightened service he provided to the Yi minority, shared the values of the Sani and Lolo (Yi) ethnicities. He learned their language, both spoken and written. In 1909, he published the first dictionary of the Lolo language in the Nazareth Press in Hong Kong. He also developed a group of flourishing Catholic communities in Lumeiyi in the region of the famous stone forest, southwest of Kunming, where he ordained the first Lolo priest.
In 1929, the autonomous Dali region in western Yunnan was entrusted to the care of the French Congregation of Priests of the Sacred Heart of Betharram. A beautiful church was built in the local style of the Bai people with a façade decorated with shields and noble symbols. In 1935, the northeast region of Zhaotong became an apostolic prefecture run by the local Chinese priests. A MEP missionary, Pierre Chicard (1834â1887), had made himself known in that area with his indomitable spirit of chivalry.
The MEP Procurator: A Critical Role in the China Mission
Missionary activity in Asia required strong financial support and an available stable relay in Asia itself. The procurator, working as a financial officer of the MEP in Asia, played a particularly important role in the administration of the China Mission. In fact, besides being responsible for the allocation of funding, the office of the procurator functioned far beyond matters of finance. It served as its headquarters and the MEP procurator took charge of personnel and other mission-related jurisdiction affairs. He first settled in Macao and was circumspect in his relationship with the Portuguese. Until the mid-19th century, the southeast coast provinces, Guangdong and Guangxi, were still under Macao jurisdiction, led by the Portuguese.
For a long time, the first stop of a MEP missionary was in Macao before traveling to the final destination. Upon arrival, missionaries would receive advice from the procurator about the best route for reaching their mission. When there were major obstacles, the procurator had the authority to redirect them to a different mission. The role of the procurator in Macao became even more important after the mid-19th century when French trade and military activity extended directly into China. On many occasions, the procurator provided interpreters from the missionaries for diplomatic or business delegations to China. The procurator also received regular reports about the mission work currently underway in inland China. A key man at that time was the procurator Napoléon Libois, who officially started in his office in 1842. Libois worked with his colleague, Joseph Callery (1810â1862), who had extensive knowledge about the Chinese language and the countryâs social network. Both Libois and Callery had a friendly relationship with the French plenipotentiary Théodorede Lagrené (1800â1862), and Callery participated in the preparation and translation of the Sino-French treaties.
In 1847, Libois decided to transfer the procure to Hong Kong, where the British administration seemed to be more liberal, more welcoming, and more open to promising investments. In 1864, responding to the requests of many missionaries in China, Libois installed Pierre Xavier Cazenave (1834â1912) as a fellow procurator in Shanghai. Besides offering easier access to the MEPâs 14 missions in China, the Shanghai procure became a source of income thanks to the opportunities available in the French concession. Léon Robert, the Shanghai procurator in 1891, contributed to the development of Shanghai, becoming a member of the municipal council from 1898 to 1904. Well known for his financial competency and numerous achievements, a street in Shanghai was named for him. However, Route Père Robert was renamed Ruijin Street in 1943 and the procure buildings were transformed into a hospital.
De Guébriant and Disputes on Indigenization in 1919
Despite the losses caused by the Boxers in 1900 and a host of hardships that occurred due to natural and social disasters, the missions in China were prosperous in the first half of the 20th century. In Paris, the MEP seminary recruits filled the new aisle built a few decades earlier, which had many more rooms. Young missionaries with particular talents in essential professions such as architecture and carpentry were eager to go to China and the missions benefited from this cohort of young talented missionaries. For example, in the Sichuan province at Hebachang near Bailuzhen, the construction of the Seminary of the Annunciation started around 1895. The majestic white building that emerges from the green slopes of the forest was completed in 1908 and many Chinese priests were trained there until 1950.
A temporary setback occurred during World War I (1914â1918) when the French missionaries had to return home to join the army. A few missionaries were exempted from this obligation for various reasons. Jean B. Budes de Guébriant, descended from a noble family of Bretagne, had been in South Sichuan since 1898. In 1907, he explored the Lolo areas along the deep valleys leading from Sichuan to Yunnan. In 1910, this region, known then as Kientchangwas, erected a special mission and de Guébriant, nominated as its first apostolic vicar and consecrated as bishop in 1910 in Suifu (Yibin), established his own diocesan center in Ningyuan (Xichang). He had to leave this position in January 1917 after he was appointed apostolic vicar to Guangzhou.
Canton vicariate was a vast territory that did not have a sufficient number of missionaries, and new missionary institutes were eager to assume the administration of the territories in China. The Salesian missionaries from Italy, for example, were offered the Shaozhou region north of Guangzhou. The new American missionary society of Maryknoll, which was modeled along the same lines as the MEP, was searching for a place to start their missionary work. De Guébriant offered the busy Kongmoon (Jiangmen) region west of Guangzhou to them and the Maryknoll missionaries later received the supervision rights to Meixian in Guangdong, Wuzhou, and Guilin in Guangxi, and Fushun in Manchuria from the MEP.
De Guébriantâs wise policy in the Canton province resulted in conferring authority to Pope Benedict XV on July 22, 1919, who invited him to undertake a general apostolic visit to all the China missions. At that time, many foreign missionaries were still suspicious of indigenous priests and tended to prevent the local clergy from growing and developing their skills. Many missionary institutes also availed themselves of financial means provided by their country of origin, which made the Church of China appear to be a foreign enterprise, stifling local initiatives and responsibilities.
As a Frenchman, De Guébriant was aware of this situation. He did not question the French protectorate, but he had to take into account the powerful patriotic feelings of the people in China and in particular the May Fourth Movement initiated by Chinese university students. Catholic scholars in Tianjin, supported by the Belgian Vincentian Vincent Lebbe, believed that the apostolic visitors were reluctant to listen to their requests. De Guébriant invited Vincent Lebbe to a meeting in Shanghai on October 1, 1919. He understood Lebbeâs request for a fast consecration of Chinese bishops, but he himself favored a longer preparation for practical reasons. De Guébriant believed that a Chinese bishop would not be able to manage the medical and educational institutions financed by overseas sources, and, besides, Chinese bishops would not benefit from the same authority the foreigners enjoyed in dealing with the Chinese government.
De Guébriant made his apostolic visit and reached Beijing when the Popeâs Encyclical Letter Maximum Illud, âSpreading Catholic Faith to the Worldâ was being promulgated on November 30, 1919. The Pope wanted to free the church from the hold of the various colonial powers in the wake of rising nationalism. De Guébriantâs apostolic visit lasted for about half a year, from September 1919 to March 1920. On June 1, 1920, he submitted his report to the Propaganda. He recommended the appointment of an apostolic delegate to China and the convening of a general council. The delegate Celso Costantini was subsequently nominated on August 22, 1922, and the general Council of the China Church took place in Shanghai in 1924. The general assembly of the MEP Society was held in Hong Kong in March of the following year. De Guébriant was elected general superior, and upon his return to Paris, he cooperated with Vincent Lebbe in founding a home for training the indigenous Chinese clergy.
Last Missionary Wave 1946â1950
After the capitulation of Japan at the end of World War II in 1945, China was again open to international exchange. In Paris, the number of candidates for the MEPâs Asian missions reached 169. In December 1946, Bishop Lemaire, just back from Jilin in Manchuria, celebrated a five-hour ordination ceremony in St. Ignatius Church. A reorganization of Chinaâs missions took place in 1946 that resulted in the establishment of a local hierarchy. Apostolic vicariates were erected for dioceses that in turn were grouped into 20 ecclesiastical regions supervised by archbishops. However, most of the bishops were foreigners and in the 14 dioceses run by the MEP bishops, only three Sichuan dioceses, namely, Yaâan, Nanchong, and Wanxian were handed over to the Chinese clergy.
Newly arrived missionaries started to learn the Chinese language. The number of MEP missionaries who were able to remain in China during the war reached 250. Mission works were reintroduced despite the problems caused by the civil war between the Nationalists and Communists. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the Peopleâs Republic of China on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Independence for the new regime meant that all remaining signs of foreign powers had to be removed from China and therefore, all foreign missions had to leave the country between 1950 and 1953. Chinese Catholics learned that they had to voice accusations against foreign missionaries in public. The MEP missionaries, having suffered violent judgments and all kinds of condemnations, including the death penalty, slowly began to move to Hong Kong and other places outside of China.
The MEPâs China Missions in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Overseas
In the early 1950s, Emile Destombes (1935â), the first assistant to the general superior, stayed in Hong Kong to receive the MEP missionaries leaving China and advise them about available opportunities for their future services. Many of the older ones returned to France either to retire or to serve in their diocese of origin. The younger ones were given new destinations. Many went to countries where they could use their Chinese language skills, such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Thailand, and if they were able to learn a new language, they were sent to the neighboring countries of Japan and Korea.
Andrew Verineux (1897â1983), nominated bishop of the new diocese of Yingkou in southern Manchuria in 1949, never reached his destination because he was arrested and then expelled from China in 1951. The next year he was appointed administrator of the new apostolic prefecture of Hualien on the east coast of Taiwan. Two missionaries from Manchuria joined him there with five more from other parts of China. In the mid-1960s, they received more missionaries who had been expelled from Burma. Together with those sent directly from France, missionaries in Hualien achieved significant achievements among the ethnic minorities that included Amis, Tarrocos, and Bununs. In some cases, an entire village of aboriginal tribes converted to Christianity. Verineux built dozens of churches in solid concrete to avoid the damage that occurred from the typhoons in that area. Later in the 1970s, they adapted their services when most of their people migrated to Taipei as industrial workers.
Hong Kong was not a MEP mission but the MEP procure relocated there in 1847, and the society ran two important institutes: the Bethany sanatorium and the Nazareth printing house. The most well-known MEP building in Hong Kong was the so-called Former French Mission Building located in todayâs Battery Path in Central; the original structure on this site dates back to 1842. In 1915, the MEP acquired it and commissioned a major renovation. In the process, a chapel topped by a cupola was added in the northwest corner and the building was refaced with red bricks. It reopened in 1917 and was sold to the Hong Kong Government in 1953. In 1952, the superiors closed the Nazareth Printing House, perhaps thinking that it would no longer be of use because of the general withdrawal from China. Many local institutes were amazed at the great loss of this internationally recognized institution. Two MEP priests expelled from China remained in Hong Kong. René Chevalier (1909â1981) from Canton became parish priest of Our Lady of Lourdes, the church in the Taikulao village, where the Catholic families of the Nazareth workers lived, and Joseph Marius Madeore (1901â1981) from Guangxi founded the Church of the Holy Rosary in Kennedy Town, west of Hong Kong Island.
In the 1960s, some MEP missionaries residing in the Bethany home conducted apostolic activities in the Hong Kong diocese. Léon Trivière åè¯ (1915â1998), expelled from Chengdu, acted as a journalist and closely observed the situation in Mainland China and publishing articles in the MEP Bulletin to update the China situation. René Sylvestre è©©å¨å¾· (1916â2008), expelled from Shantou, continued to publish the magazine Joyful Vanguard in Chinese for Christian children. Eugène Chagny æ²æ (1909â2001) from Moukden (Shenyang) was the chaplain of the French-speaking Catholic community in Hong Kong. Gabriel Lajeune é»åæ¨ (1926â), after two years in Vietnam, was fully engaged in pastoral service in the new high rising blocks of flats of Chaiwan, east of the island, where he built a new church. Younger missionaries were sent from Paris to Hong Kong. Pierre Jeanne ä»»è³é (1945â) assisted John Tong in the opening of the Holy Spirit Study Center and specialized in relations with the Catholic Church in mainland China. Since the late 1980s, young missionaries went to Hong Kong to learn Cantonese and start their service in a local parish. A few of them learned Mandarin and responded to invitations from Mainland China to conduct retreats there and formed a MEP Hong Kong Group at the disposal of the bishop.
The closing of the new Peopleâs Republic of China to foreign missionaries was, however, a blessing for the overseas Chinese Catholic communities. Before 1959, the MEP was already in charge of the missions in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Madagascar, but few of them were available to Chinese educated minorities. The arrival of a large number of missionaries expelled from China in the 1950s allowed for new growth in local churches. During this period, many Chinese priests studying in Europe and the United States who did not return to China were sent to Singapore and Malaysia. The Chinese populations in these South East Asian countries were far more open to Christianity than they were in China itself. Catechumenates, baptisms, and lay associations multiplied while the second Vatican Council was taking place in Rome in 1962â1965.
Two significant cases should be noted: the activity in Singapore by Pierre Abrial ç´æ¼æ° (1922â1990) and Paul Dong è£ç«, both of whom were from China. Abrial spent four years in the diocese of Wanxian, Sichuan, before going to Singapore. He baptized 16 people in Wanxian and baptized over 3,000 converts in Singapore, and he built two large churches. He died in 1990. His apostolate had powerful support from the Legion of Mary. Paul Dong from Tianjin was a student in Leuven, where he took part in the churchâs pre-conciliar movements of Catholic action. Unable to return to China under the communist regime, he was posted to Singapore, where he formed Chinese-speaking groups of young Christian workers including Young Christian students, bible study groups, and Chinese catechumenate and marriage encounter groups. Some MEP missionaries who spoke Cantonese moved first to Vietnam, particularly working among the Cantonese population of Cholon in Saigon. Two of them later moved to Madagascar. Henri Cotto (1908â1988) opened a famous Franco-Chinese school in Tamatave. Aimé Pinsel (1920â2012) toured all parts of the island of Madagascar and often visited Chinese families there.
Exchanges with Mainland China since 1980
In the 1950s, most missionaries who returned to France from China were weary after their painful exodus. Léon Trivière (1915â1998) alone was in high spirits, convinced that the New China, led by Mao Zedong, had embarked on a journey to a brighter future. In 1974, he glimpsed a ray of hope when an international colloquium organized by Catholics and Protestants to reflect on the destiny of the New China explored the various aspects of their rejection and harsh pressure on the Christians in China. Invited to produce a paper on the âTheological Implications of the New China,â Trivière invited Jean Charbonnier æ²ç¾é (1932â), from the Singapore Mission, to collaborate with him. Both of them took an active part in the Leuven colloquium in 1974, as well as in the dialog among concerned Catholics and Protestants.
The admission of the Peopleâs Republic of China to the United Nations in October 1971 was the starting point of these openings. Although all of Chinaâs churches had been closed during the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976, a church in Beijing, the Nantang, was opened to foreign Catholics for Sunday Mass. On August 15, 1978, Chinese Catholics began to fill the church to celebrate the feast of the Assumption. At that time, Deng Xiaoping was launching his new policy of the United Front for modernization. Religious bodies had their share in the âPolitical Consultative Conference of the Chinese Peopleâ (Zhengxie). Traveling to China as a tourist was again possible and responding to requests from MEP missionaries in Hong Kong and Singapore, the MEP General Assembly of 1980 created a special China Service. Missionaries using the Mandarin language in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore formed a group particularly concerned with the evolution of the church in China. They seized opportunities to visit China and responded to requests for help from Chinese Catholics. A special group composed of Catholic University students to be educated in Chinese schools was founded in Singapore on Pentecost Sunday 1981. They chose the name of Zhonglian (China Catholic Communication) to encourage exchanges with Catholics in China, bringing them out of their long isolation and introducing them to a new life of the church that had become possible since the Second Vatican Council. They published a special illustrated magazine in Chinese, introducing the Creed, Holy Scripture, liturgy, and history of the church in China. They published news about the latest developments in church life in China and abroad and mailed hundreds of magazines to China. Singapore Zhonglian also started publishing a bilingual Guide to the Catholic Church in China in 1986 with an English text that was parallel with the corresponding Chinese text. These efforts have made it helpful for foreign visitors to find a church for Sunday mass and to connect with Chinese Catholics anywhere in China. The guidebook is updated every four years. The eighth edition was published in 2014.
In Paris, the MEP China Service took the form of an Association Relais France-Chine created in 1983 by Paul Richard (1919â2006), who started his mission service in the Tibet Mission of Kangding. After 1950, he moved to Vietnam where he directed the Chinese school of St. Theresa near Saïgon. After retiring to Paris in 1975, he worked in a national service that welcomed and assisted refugees. After leaving this office, he became fully active in the new MEP China Service. His first purpose was to welcome students coming from Mainland China, updating French people about the situation in China and encouraging them to engage in religious and cultural exchanges. Students from China also benefited from another center supported by the MEP society the Centre France-Asie, formerly the Foyer des étudiants dââ¯Extrême orient. Founded in 1925, it has long been of help to Chinese students from Taiwan, and its French-language courses still attract an increasing number of mainland students.
Beginning in 1994, many more priests and seminarians from China went to France, some of whom had been invited by the MEP as part of a broader policy initiated by Bishop Jin of Shanghai. Many theology students went to the United States, the Philippines, and Europe to pursue their studies. The Chinese Catholic Association in 1992 authorized the use of the Chinese language in the liturgy. Academics and theologians from Hong Kong and Taiwan were invited to teach in Chinese, and in the same year, seminarians, priests, and sisters were sent overseas for further training.
The MEP has withdrawn from their Asian seminaries, which are currently managed by the local clergy. However, the MEP Paris House welcomes priests who wish to further their theological training in Europe. Over the past four decades, some 70 Asian priests have visited Paris House. They are Vietnamese, Indian, Korean, Burmese, Thai, Indonesian, and Chinese and each one has studied at the Catholic Institute or other university for a period of approximately five years. In addition, a special annual summer session was held in Europe for students from China from 1994 to 2009. Three of the sessions were organized by the MEP China Service in France and other sessions took place in Germany, Ireland, Poland, Switzerland, Rome, Leuven, Austria, Spain, England, and Slovakia. The number of participants in these sessions, priests, religious sisters, and seminarians, grew from nine in 1994 to 100 in 2009.
In the meantime, Catholic life in China has achieved the same standard of church life as in other countries. Communication via the Internet greatly favors sharing with the universal church even though a ban continues on an open exchange with Rome at a higher political level. However, missionary service remains meaningful for both sides with bilingual French and Chinese priests offering their services in France and China. These bilingual priests and sisters have a rich missionary spirit and they foster communication in both the field of cultural and religious studies as well as in the more popular form of pilgrimages and celebrations.
Eight Jesuit missionaries from Sainte-Marie who worked among the Hurons were ritually tortured and killed at various times in the mid-17th century in Canada, in what is now southern Ontario, and in upstate New York during the warfare between the Iroquois and the Huron and were canonized and venerated as martyrs by the Catholic Church. They were St. René Goupil (1642), St. Isaac Jogues (1646), St. Jean de Lalande (1646), St. and Antoine Daniel (1648), St. JeandeBrébeuf (1649), St. Noël Chabanel (1649), St. Charles Garnier (1649), and St. Gabriel Lalemant (1649).
Robert Entenmann, âCatholics and Society in Eighteen Century Sichuan.â In Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present, ed. Daniel Bays, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 9â23.
Sue Bradshaw, âReligious Women in China: An Understanding of Indigenization,â The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 68, No. 1 (1982), 28â45.
Lucien Gibert, Dictionnaire Historique et Géographique de la Manchourie (Hong Kong: Nazareth, 1934).
Notices Nécrologiques de Jean Pierre Néel, Numéro: 733, Année 1858. AMEP.
Ernest P. Young, Ecclesiastical Colony: Chinaâs Catholic Church and the French Religious Protectorate (London: Oxford University Press, 2013), 1.
References
Bradshaw, Sue. âReligious women in China: An understanding of indigenization.â The Catholic Historical Review 68, no. 1 (1982): 28â45.
Entenmann, Robert E. âCatholics and society in eighteenth-century Sichuan.â Christianity in China, (1996): 8â23.
Gibert, Lucien. Dictionnaire historique et géographique de la Mandchourie. Imprimerie de la Société des missions-étrangères, 1934.
Young, Ernest P. Ecclesiastical colony: Chinaâs catholic church and the French religious protectorate. Oxford University Press, 2013.