Chinese Catholics have endured devastating division in the past century.
Kim-Kwong Chan | posted 8/08/2008 07:46AM
In the early 1950s, the Chinese Catholic Church and the new Chinese government were on a collision course. The government regarded the Catholic Church as a form of Western interference in China. Catholics regarded the Communists as ideological archenemies out to destroy the church. This tension was tragically apparent in the fate of the Chinese Jesuit priest Bede Cheung. Fr. Cheung organized the Catholic Youth Movement and became the leading Catholic figure to resist the government's attempt to create a "patriotic" (pro-Communist) Catholic organization. He was arrested in 1951 and died in jail three months later. When his family came to retrieve his body for burial, eyewitnesses reported that his body was broken almost beyond recognition and showed signs of torture. His death became an icon of loyalty to the Catholic faith and gave many others the courage to confront the government—courage that was much needed in the violent decades that followed.
Standoff
The government's suspicion ...
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