Latest News on Beaten Sisters
The sister, over 40, who would not like to disclose her name, lay in bed when I visited. She tried to stop the men beating the sisters, but was pushed down, injuring her left hand and right arm. To this day, she is not able to make the Sign of the Cross properly.
She said that the night before the sisters were attacked, around 50 men came to the former school where the sisters resided. The men were masked, wore red uniforms, and held sticks. (Building workers usually wear red uniforms.) They cut the electrical lines to the school's lights and ordered the sisters to leave, but the sisters refused. They did not beat the sisters that night. The next evening, some men with sticks came again. This time, they did not wear uniforms, but had white towels wrapped around their arms. They pushed the sisters into the school and began to beat them. The men beat the sisters several times.
Though some nuns had been beaten down, the men still beat them, saying, “See how you pretend you are dying!”
Sister Cheng Jing screamed: “My eye can't see anything, my eye can't see anything….” A maid who took care of the sisters dialed 110 to call the police. When the men saw the police arriving, they ran away.
The sister I visited is still horrified by the thought of what happened that evening. Most of the beaten sisters including Sr. Zan, whose leg was broken have left various hospitals, but Sr. Dong Jia Nian is still in Red Cross Hospital after an operation on her back. One of her vertebra was broken. I was told that she would have a second operation. Sr. Cheng Jing was in Xian Forth Hospital. The bone of her eye socket was broken and her eye was full of blood. She still cannot see clearly from the injured eye. Sr. Wang Mo Ran was in Provincial Hospital and the doctor said that she had recovered and could leave the hospital now, but the sister I interviewed did not think Sr. Wang had recovered and complained that the hospital had stopped her treatment.
The interviewed sister said that the officials of the religious bureau and the United Front Committee had come to condole with them and felt sorry about the attack. She thought that these officials were sympathetic to them and hoped the school property would be returned to the Church. The officials also recorded the event and wrote down the sisters' request and complaint and wanted to coordinate with other governmental departments. What the sisters find unsatisfactory is the government of Xi’an Lian Hu District and the district educational bureau. They didn't return the school to the Church. Instead, they sold it to a land developer.
The event raised sympathy from Xi’an citizens. Some of them, including at least one teacher from a middle school near South Church, joined a march of Catholics. It is said that the Chinese government tried to block the news. Recently, the news about the beaten sisters suddenly disappeared from Chinese Catholic websites run by the “official” Church.
I also interviewed Bishop Li Du An, archbishop of Xi’an, who had just left the hospital. Bishop Li said it's a conflict between the developer's workers and the nuns. Three of the attackers have been arrested. One of them was caught in another province. The bishop said: “We are negotiating with the educational bureau and the developer to solve the problem, but it's incredible they chose this time to beat our sisters.” He decided to purchase the three mu (2,000-meter-square) plot where the former school is located for 6.5 million RMB. He said that the price was lower than the market price, which was over 3 million RMB per mu (667 square meters). He added that the school was confiscated by the government during the Cultural Revolution and was given to the Lian Hu educational bureau. Because the government has not returned it to the Church, the educational bureau is the still the legal owner. The school is within the grounds of the church. Bishop Li has to buy the land to make the church grounds complete. The bishop also mentioned that the news released by overseas media did not reflect reality.
Conflicts between house owners and land developers are quite common in China when owners of houses cannot get sufficient compensation. The Beijing Youth Daily released a notice issued by the Beijing city government on December 7. It says Beijing city strictly forbids cutting off the water and power supplies to houses to be demolished and threatening or forcing inhabitants to move out.
Faith on Loess Plateau
A small car crowded with 5 people arduously climbed along a narrow, bumpy, clay path on Loess Plateau in Shaanxi Province. I was in a sad mood because Deacon Zong, the assistant of the Most Reverend Li Jing Feng (who was invited to the synod), Bishop of Fengxiang Diocese, had described to me in detail the poor living conditions of the Catholics in Longxian County.
The Catholics live in clay houses. A house has three rooms. The main door opens into a kitchen and there are two rooms right and left of the kitchen, respectively. The left room is used as a storeroom for corn and capsicum, the only products they produce. The whole family lives in the right room. The upper part of the only window is covered with paper. Next to the window there is a kang a raised sleeping platform which occupies half of the room. The smoke of the stove in the kitchen passes underneath the kang to keep it warm. Family members sleep, sit and eat on the kang. Opposite the kang there is a cabinet or two wooden boxes and one black-and-white television, the only electrical appliance the family owns. Between the kang and the cabinet, against the wall, there is a raised board used as a table, over which are pictures of Jesus and the Madonna. The family says prayers in front of them.
Loess Plateau suffers from drought and is often attacked by hail and early frost, so the Catholics have small harvests, only sufficient to maintain their lives. Many families are not able to afford to send their children to school. The villagers bathe once every six months due to a lack of water. Some families are very poor so they have to live in caves. A kang is next to the opening of the cave. While the smoke of the stove warms the kang, it also makes the ceiling of the cave black. Because cave residents don’t have furniture to put a TV on, they dig a hole in the wall of the cave for it.
I expected to see some pained faces when we arrived in the village. To my surprise, what I saw were pleasant Catholics. The laity's leader in the village guided us to many Catholic families. I was shivering in their 10-degree-Fahrenheit rooms (they only heat the stove to cook, so the room temperature is almost the same as outside), but enjoyed their happiness. Fr. Li, who accompanied us, told me that all of them were neophytes so they needed to enhance their faith through Bible study etc., but he was not able to raise enough funds to purchase Bibles or biblical materials for them.
Bible study in some parishes of Fengxiang Diocese is vigorous. Fr. Wu in Chencun village told me that the Catholics had not been devout before, so he had to visit Catholic homes one by one to ask them to attend Mass on Sundays. But now they came to church almost every day after Bible study. Fr. Wu established five Bible-study groups including groups for children and students at school. He led Bible study every evening. Sometimes, they had two groups in one night. They selected one paragraph of the Scriptures to study, and then meditated and reviewed their own lives according to the studied verses, and shared with the others. Father said, “I have to meditate and share my experiences five times and I’m so moved. It’s totally different from Bible teaching that I provide during the homily at Mass. That only provides biblical knowledge, but Bible study in a group makes you close to the Truth; you get strength from God and life changes.”
The Catholics in Chencun became strong. They loved Mass, they helped each other and they spread the Gospel among their neighbors and friends. Many villagers were baptized. Fr. Wu said that the important thing was not finishing the study of some biblical books. The fruitful result came from persistent Bible study without end. Fr. Wu told me that the biggest problem he met was a lack of Bibles and Bible-study materials. He downloaded all the biblical materials that he could find on the Internet, but as he said, the materials on the Internet are not in-depth. I gave Fr. Wu one copy of a study of the Gospel of John and he was excited to accept it.
Fr. Gao was pastor of the sole church in Baoji City, which has a population of seven hundred thousand. Four years ago, Baoji had five hundred Catholics, but now the number is one thousand. The achievement came from Bible study, which enhanced the Catholics' faith. They actively spread the Gospel among neighbors, associates and friends. Fr. Gao showed me about 50 Bibles on a bookshelf in the church. The Catholics usually did not buy Bibles, but came to the church to study them in order to save money. Fr. Gao only gave Bibles to neophytes free of charge. He said: “If I had money, I would buy more Bibles so that every Catholic could own a Bible or ask Catholics to send Bibles to their friends. Protestants use this way to evangelize.” There are 3000 Protestants in Baoji, and they have four churches.
Bishop Li Jing Feng said that the shortage of Bibles and biblical materials was a big problem. He showed me a serial set of biblical annotations (almost 10 books) published by a Protestant church. His priests had to refer to these books to explain the Bible. The bishop was not satisfied with Protestant biblical annotations, and some of them did not accord with Catholic teachings, but Catholic biblical annotations are very rare in China. That’s why he asked me to print as many as possible of the study of the Gospel of John for the Church in China.
After leaving Fengxiang, I went to Xi’an to visit His Excellency Li Du An, Archbishop of the Xi’an Archdiocese. He had just returned to South Church from the hospital. The archbishop suffered from liver cancer and lumbar disease. He lay in bed in weakness holding a study of the Gospel of John that I gave him and told me, “Bibles are too expensive for Catholics and they would not like to buy them. But Bible study is very important for them. You are doing great work to try to print Bibles and biblical materials for the Church in China.”
Shaanxi has a song to describe Loess Plateau: “My home is on Loess Plateau and the strong wind blows over my head but it’s my beloved home….” Shaanxi folk songs are resounding but mixed somewhat with sorrow. The folks living on the dry, dusty and barren plateau need hope, but the hope can only come from the Gospel and from Catholics who would like to give them Bibles and let them know what true happiness is.
A Note from CE Editors
As you can see by the reports above, our correspondent in China, Paul Pann, has been working hard to spread the word about our Catholic Scripture Study (CSS) materials. Happily, he's finding a great hunger among the Chinese people for quality, Catholic Bible-teaching materials. Paul is not working alone. Franciscans in Hong Kong are translating our Catholic Scripture Study materials into Chinese. Bishops across China are introducing their priests to the program and the requests keep pouring in. We want to help Paul meet the demand, but we also want to do it in the most cost-effective way possible. Our plan is to help Paul get Catholic Scripture Studies into the hands of as many Chinese Catholics as possible, as quickly as possible. And, as good stewards, our goal is to make this effort self-sustaining.
We plan to print thousands of copies of Catholic Scripture Studies in China, distribute many at no cost to bishops, priests, and religious, and to sell the rest at a very reasonable price enough to pay for the next printing. A gift to this effort will go much farther in China than it could here in the US. Just consider what your gifts can accomplish:
• A gift of only $18 will cover the cost of printing 20 copies of the Catholic Scripture Study on the Gospel of John.
• A contribution of $45 will cover the printing of 50 copies!
• For $72, we can provide copies of the Catholic Scripture Study on the Gospel of John to the pastors of 80 parishes.
• Only $108 can put a copy in the hands of every one of the 120 bishops in China! We have developed a uniquely effective infrastructure in China, with special access to key clergy in the underground and patriotic Churches. Getting our materials into the hands of bishops there can make Catholic Scripture Study explode in China.
• An offering of $210 will cover Paul's travel costs for an entire month, as he meets with priests and bishops throughout China, introducing them to our Catholic Scripture Study materials.
• A contribution of $1,310 will cover all of Paul's salary and travel costs for a month, his visits with priests and bishops, his talks to groups of university students, and meetings with clergy who are planning Catholic Scripture Study leader-training programs.
• A gift of any size will help us in this important effort to evangelize China while interest in Christianity there is spreading like wildfire.
Here's how to contribute quickly, easily, and securely: You can use your credit card right now to send your gift online on the secure Catholic Exchange website. Just click here.
Please, prayerfully consider how you can help our Catholic brothers and sisters in China. Priests and laity alike are begging for our help. And the timing for this project couldn't be better. Please take a moment to send us the most generous gift possible for this important work. Besides being a rich mission field and high priority of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, Chinese evangelization is also very much in the strategic interests of the free people of the Western world. The Spirit is alive in China and it's our duty to deliver the fullness of the Faith to our brothers and sisters there.
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Exchange
Paul Pann is the Beijing editor for Catholic Exchange