Xiao and Yang are a young couple living in Beijing. Like most Roman Catholics living in the cities, they generally pray at home on Sundays.
Getting Acquainted
Xiao and Yang stayed for awhile to talk with Hong and his family. They learned that this group of underground Catholics had come to the Hong house for Mass on a regular basis for years; the police had still not discovered them. Hong's wife thanked God for their security. She also voiced her appreciation for her neighbors, who obviously knew that the Hong family had some special activities on Sunday evenings, but never asked questions and always kept the secret.
Other families in Beijing had not been so lucky, Hong reported. In one case with which he was familiar, the faithful had been able to protect the priest, who escaped before the police could identify him. But all of those attending the Mass had been heavily fines, and the host family was assessed a penalty equivalent to a full year's income. Naturally, all of the vestments and altar vessels were confiscated.
Xiao and Yang returned home delighted that they had been able to attend Mass at a church loyal to the Roman Catholic faith. But they did not know how long they would be able to continue coming to the Hong home. Yang was expecting a baby. Would they take the child to the Hong house for Mass? As the baby grew, could they trust him to keep the secret from his friends? Would the child be traumatized if they were discovered by the police?
The Catholic Patriotic Association firmly condemned what Xiao and Yang had just done: the “sneaky behavior” of attending as Mass that was celebrated illegally, in the underground Church. In the minds of children, the role of the police is to catch the “bad people.” Would Yang's baby think that his parents were criminals?
The Last Loyal Priest in Beijing
At 92 years of age, Father Yang is now the last priest in Beijing who remains resolutely loyal to the Holy See. He has not been driven out of the capital city because he has a valid residence permit, and he has no surviving relatives in the town where he was born: Baoding, in the Hebei province.
Although he is elderly and infirm, Father Yang is under constant supervision. Police officials visit him regularly, and ask his neighbors to report on his activities. He is not allowed to celebrate Mass, even in his own home. Occasionally underground Catholics are able to pick up Father Yang in their cars and take him to their homes to administer the last rites for a dying relative.
Father Yang was a monk, living in an abbey in Zhengding, Hebei, before the Communist government took power in 1949. The abbey was disbanded in1950, and most of the monks took refuge in Hong Kong. Father Yang chose to stay, along with two other monks. He moved to Beijing, working as a laborer in a vineyard. In 1966, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, he was beaten severely because he had been a monk, and required to undergo “re-education.”
Father Yang was already over 70 when he began to serve as a parish priest for the underground Church in Beijing. He celebrated Mass in different private homes, until he was caught in 1996. Then the police confiscated all his vestments, his Bible, crucifix, and other religious items.
This article originally appeared in Catholic World Report and is adapted with permission.
Here are the previous two installments of Pan Zhen's “China: Notes from the Underground” series:
Part 2: “We Are Brothers”
Part 1: China: Notes from the Underground
A Simple, Secret Ceremony
(Editor's Note: This is the third in a 5-part series of articles that will take you behind the scenes into the lives and struggles of our Chinese brothers and sisters. Please read their letter to you.)
Since all the Catholic churches of Beijing are controlled by the Catholic Patriotic Association, and since the law stipulates that these “official” churches are the only places where Mass can be celebrated, Xiao and Yang make an extra effort to visit their native village for major feast days, to attend Mass at an underground parish.
The Bishop of Beijing recognized by the Holy See is dead, and has not been replaced. The only loyal priest still living in Beijing, Father Yang, is 92 years old, and too weak to leave his home to celebrate Mass.
Priests from other areas visit Beijing to serve the loyal Catholics there, however. They organize Mass secretly, in the homes of the faithful, for Sunday mornings. But these private homes are not large enough to hold all of the Catholics in Beijing. And in order to protect themselves, the people in whose homes the Mass is celebrated keep strict limits on those who will be allowed to attend. Ordinarily, only relatives and close friends, and Catholics who are personally recommended by the priest, can participate.
Xiao and Yang were fortunate. When they returned to their home village on vacation, a priest there gave them an introduction to a family in downtown Beijing in whose home Mass was sometimes celebrated. Xiao visited the family, and was permitted to come for Mass. The host family was named Hong.
The faithful went to Hong's home at 8 in the evening on Sundays. If a priest was there, they would have a Mass; if not, they would talk and pray, or Hong would show videos–sometimes of the Holy Father celebrating Mass, sometimes of the lives of the saints. Almost all of these videos were in English, but many had Chinese subtitles. The videos, which had been smuggled into China, were considered precious.
The Hong family lived in a bungalow with a small yard, which was reached through a gate. When Xiao and Yang arrived they saw two men at the gate, smoking cigarettes; these were the lookouts. The faithful had already begun to gather.
The Hong home had three rooms: a sitting room in the middle of the house with bedrooms on either side; the kitchen and toilet were outside the main building, in the yard. A priest was in one bedroom, hearing confessions. He sat on the side of a bed, with a crucifix on the mattress beside him; the penitent would kneel before the crucifix to make his confession. Other members of the congregation were waiting in the sitting room and the other bedroom. There were more than 60 people in the Hong home, so the rooms were crowded. Because they had few chairs, the Hong family had prepared plenty of rugs, and the faithful sat on the floor as they waited.
Confessions eventually were finished. The priest now began Mass, before a simple altar in a corner of the sitting room. The faithful were kneeling, virtually on top of one another. Those who could not fit into the sitting room were crowded into the two bedrooms.
The Mass was simple and quick. To save time, the priest waited until after the ceremony to deliver his homily. At Communion time, two members of the congregation left, to replace the lookouts. The men who had been loitering at the gate entered, knelt in prayer in front of the altar for a few moments, and then received the Eucharist.
After Mass, Hong and his wife carefully hid the altar, putting a television in its place. Now there was nothing about the room that resembled a church. The priest had removed his vestments; he looked like everyone else. Now he could deliver his homily; if the police arrived, they would find nothing suspicious–just a large group of ordinary people engaged in conversation.
The priest exhorted the faithful to spend less time on their own amusements–to watch less television, and devote more time to prayer and spiritual reading. Then he went back to the bedroom to pray privately, and the congregation began to break up.
