Gerolamo Fazzini - Diaries of Chinese Martyrs

Diaries
of the
Chinese Martyrs

Stories of Heroic Catholics
Living in Maos China

Edited by Gerolamo Fazzini

Preface by Bernardo Cervellera

Translated by Charlotte J. Fasi

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS
Manchester, New Hampshire

Copyright 2015 by EMI; English translation copyright 2016 by Sophia Institute Press

Diaries of the Chinese Martyrs was formerly published in 2015 by Editrice Missionaria Italiana (Emi), Bologna, Italy, under the title In Catene per Cristo .

Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

Cover and interior design by Perceptions Design Studio.

Interior images courtesy of the Pime Archives of Milan and from the United States Information Service (USIS).

Biblical references in this book are taken from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1965, 1966 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Fazzini, Gerolamo, editor. | Cervellera, Bernardo, writer of

preface. | Fasi, Charlotte J., translator.

Title: Diaries of the Chinese martyrs : stories of heroic Catholics living in

Maos China / edited by Gerolamo Fazzini ; preface by Bernardo Cervellera

; translated by Charlotte J. Fasi.

Other titles: In catene per Cristo. English

Description: Manchester, New Hampshire : Sophia Institute Press, 2016. |

Published in 2015 by Editrice Missionaria Italiana (EMI), Bologna, Italy,

under the title In Catene per Cristo. | Includes bibliographical

references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016000044 | ISBN 9781622823215 (pbk. : alk. paper) ePub ISBN 9781622823222

Subjects: LCSH: Christian martyrs China Biography.

Classification: LCC BR1608.C6 I613 2016 | DDC 272/.90951 dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016000044

To

the Holy Guardian Angels

and to

my brother, Joseph Paul Fasi

C.J.F

I want you to know, brethren, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole praetorian guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ; and most of the brethren have been made confident in the Lord because of my imprisonment, and are much more bold to speak the word of God without fear.

Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel; the former proclaim Christ out of partisanship, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment.What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in that I rejoice.... For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

Philippians 1:1218, 21

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Never, as in these times, as Pope Francis has often emphasized, have so many martyrs been killed throughout the world solely because they are Christians.

During Holy Week of 2015 the pope did not miss an opportunity to recall this drama, which is linked to Jesus Christ under the Cross. He began Palm Sunday recalling Christs way: the humiliation of the Passion as lived by all those who are persecuted because of their faith. Let us also think of those who through their faithful adherence to the Gospel are paying personally for their beliefs. And let us think of our brothers and sisters who are persecuted because they are Christian; they are todays martyrs. They do not deny Jesus; rather, they bear insults and outrages with dignity, following him on his way: We can speak of clouds [multitudes] of witnesses (cf. Heb. 12:1).

Francis concluded his Easter Monday Regina Caeli address after five other appeals to catechesis, Masses, and messages with a decisive jolt to the international community: that it not remain mute and inert before all the unacceptable crimes toward our brothers and sisters, persecuted, exiled, killed and decapitated solely because they are Christian. Such a crime, he continued, constitutes a worrisome disappearance of the most elementary human rights. Departing from his prepared remarks, he then repeated: I truly wish that the international community will not turn away from this problem.

On March 15, giving precedence to the topic after the attack on two churches in Lahore, in Pakistan, Francis had said: Christians are being persecuted. Our brothers and sisters are spilling blood solely because they are Christian. And he invited all the faithful to pray so that this persecution against Christians, which the world is ignoring, will end.

There is, then, a diffuse Christian persecution that the world is trying to hide and will not look in the face.

In the days approaching Easter, only a few press organizations reported some evidence of this evil abyss with all its horror. There were also reports of massacres of Christians in Kenya, Syria, Iraq, and Libya, where our brothers and sisters are killed by haughty Islamist militiamen for their adherence to the faith. But the majority of the reporting does not go beyond the persecutions in the Muslim world. No one has ever cited the persecutions of the Chinese Catholics and Protestants.

Just one week before Easter, two priests of Harbin (a province of Heilongjiang) were abducted by the police. Father Quan Shaoyun, forty-one years old, and Father Cao Jianyou, forty-three years old, had just celebrated Mass when a group of police arrested them and carried them away to an unknown place. Both were part of a Catholic underground community not recognized by the government. Their crime was having celebrated Mass in a place not registered with the Ministry of Religious Affairs. For this they were treated like dangerous criminals. Sometime before, at the end of January 2015, a notice circulated reporting the death of the bishop Cosma Shi Enxiangdi Yixian (Hebei) at the age of ninety-four. He had spent fifty of those ninety-four years in prison for not wishing to break his ties with the pope. The Chinese government refused to give the body or his ashes to his family and even claimed publicly that the cause of the bishops death was probably drunkenness.

In March 2015, Huang Yizi, a Protestant pastor of Wenzhou (Zhejiang) was condemned for having attempted to stop the demolition of a church. For months in the province of Zhejiang there was an active campaign to destroy crosses and sacred buildings, guilty of ruining views of the skyline. Thus, some four hundred crosses and the same number of bell towers, along with a number of churches, were destroyed. The Protestant and the Catholic faithful accused the local government of wishing to suffocate the growth of the Christian communities that were so vibrant in that region.

Unfortunately, few in the mass media truly wish to report this news. Rather, they gag themselves, preferring to burn incense to the giant Chinese economy, so useful in times of crisis.

In the Western mentality there exists a false impression: since China changed her economic system (from communist to liberal to anarchy), everything changed. As a result, currently, China is a place of splendid well-being and tranquil religious liberty.

But it is not. Besides the misery of the countryside and their migrant enslaved workers, there are also in China those who suffer and those who are imprisoned because of their faith. The most glaring example is that of Monsignor Thaddeus Ma Daqin, auxiliary bishop of Shanghai. During the celebration of his episcopal consecration, July 7, 2012, Monsignor Ma expressed his desire to resign from his duties carried out up to then for the Patriotic Catholic Association (the party organism that controls the life of the Christian communities) so that he might dedicate all his energies to pastoral activities and evangelization. The afternoon of that same day, he was taken away. He disappeared for some time, and later it was confirmed that he was under house arrest, with limited movement, at the seminary of Sheshan in Shanghai. From the beginning of March 2013, Bishop Ma has been confined to the seminary, deprived of his personal liberty and prevented from exercising his episcopal functions.