Thunder in the Distance

Boniface Hanley, O.F.M.

It was 2:00 AM and he couldn't sleep. He tossed about in his bed, his wiry body vainly attempting to shake off the anger that boiled within him.

"They can't do this… they fooled me… they spoke out of both sides of their mouths…"

"Fifteen years of my life…" The remembrance of those years of dedicated priestly service as a missionary in China caused him to draw his knees up against his chest. Then, like a powerful spring uncoiling, he leaped out of bed and made for a small table in his room that served as his desk.

He lit a lamp. Lying beside the light was the note that had enraged him and his unfinished response.

Once more he read the note. It bore a Paris March 1917 dateline. "You will leave your present post and report to mission headquarters, Kashing. You will no longer function as Vicar General of Tientsin. Bishop Dumond has been so informed. Signed, Vicar General, Congregation of the Mission." He shook his head and sat down to make yet one more effort to write his reply. But once again anger overcame him. Putting down his pen, he pushed his chair back and began to pace back and forth across the room. From time to time he clenched his fist and roared into the night.

The priest, a calm, pleasant man, generally faced life's trials with humor and verve. But now events had closed tightly about him. As a Vincentian he valued and had always conscientiously observed his vow of obedience. He felt that to accept the orders the note contained would be to destroy the great dream that had given shape and purpose to his missionary life. To be obedient now, he felt, was to cooperate with the very forces of ignorance and injustice that were, in his view, undermining the missionary effort of the Catholic Church in China.

"O God," he prayed aloud, "what shall I do?"

BORN IN A GARRET

The question was one Father Lebbe rarely asked. From his boyhood, Freddy Lebbe had been decisive. His parents, Firmin Lebbe and Louise Barrier, had trained their sons and daughters to think clearly and independently. Freddy, their first-born son, exercised, without hesitation, the prerogatives and authority of his honored position over the other children. Firmin had married Louise while he was still studying law in Ghent, Belgium. Louise, a decently educated but penniless French-English governess, had taken employment with one of Firmin's aunts before she met her future husband. Firmin's father, a well-to-do, middle-class Belgian, was so angered by Firmin's choice of a girl of such modest financial circumstances, that he cut off his son without a cent. Firmin and Louise somehow scraped up the money so the new husband could complete his education. The newly-weds had set up housekeeping in a garret in Ghent and, there, Frederic Lebbe was born, August 19, 1877. As one by one, his seven children arrived, Firmin progressed in his legal profession.

Although the Lebbes moved frequently, between Belgium and France, they were united by a family atmosphere of affection and mutual respect that continued to develop irrespective of location. Wherever they were, in Paris or a Belgian provincial town, the Lebbes were at home with each other.

Religion was important to the family. Firmin had abandoned its practice as a young man, but returned to his Catholic faith before his marriage. Louise, raised a Protestant, became Catholic just before she met Firmin. During their years of marriage, both practiced their Catholicism sincerely and devoutly. Neither appeared outwardly pious. Their generosity to the poor, their kindness and concern for each other and for their children, and their steady practice of prayer, indicated the strength of their inner convictions. Firmin and Louise inculcated the same qualities in their offspring by the example of their lives more than by their words.

FIRST COMMUNION

Frederic made his First Communion in Ypres, Belgium. Small and wiry, quick in movement and in mind, the boy had dark eyes that sparkled with intelligence and good humor and sometimes with anger. He had a hot temper that could blaze out on occasion.

Once he wrote a poem for a homework assignment which the teacher judged so beautifully written that he read it to the class. Freddy beamed with pride. When he collected his paper after class he noticed the teacher had written beside the poem, "This has been copied." Freddy exploded. Even in later life he would boil with anger when he recalled the incident.

THE CHINA WATCHER

As a young boy, Freddy came across a book about Blessed Jean Gabriel Perboyre, a Vincentian priest who suffered martyrdom in China in 1840. Blessed Jean's story so moved eleven-year-old Freddy that he announced to all the family, "I am going to join the Vincentians, go to China, and become a martyr."

Firmin, Louise, Freddy's brothers and sisters took the announcement seriously. Even at that age Freddy usually did what he said he was going to do.

Only once did it seem he would not live up to his word. As a teenager he fell head over heels in love with a young lady. Whether the girl knew it or not, no one knows, but the whole Lebbe family knew it. There was so much trust and love among the Lebbes that Freddy was not ashamed to share his love pangs with his family.

Freddy survived the bout with Cupid and returned once more to his original desire.

PARIS

"I am Vincent Lebbe." With these words eighteen-year-old Freddy introduced himself to the Rector of the Vincentian Seminary of St. Lazare in Paris in November 1895. The Rector was so highly impressed that he didn't notice this new candidate, who had been baptized Frederic Lebbe, had suddenly become Vincent Lebbe.

There was always a method behind Freddy's madness. Freddy Lebbe loved and respected St. Vincent de Paul and wished to imitate the great French apostle of charity. Later on in the seminary he wrote: "Just as Vincent penetrated the world of his day, and adapted himself to its customs, ideas and manners of expression - so must we penetrate ours. We must enter into our world and its movements, not as a counterforce, but rather to shape and guide it according to the light of faith and sound reason."

Vincent Lebbe would pay a dear price for translating those brave words into brave deeds.

Freddy loved the seminary life. He studied, prayed and made friends. Naïve as it may sound, he still clung to his dream of martyrdom in China. His family traveled down from Belgium occasionally. After each visit he suffered sharp bouts of loneliness. He had grown quite close, however, to Antoine Cotta, an Egyptian seminarian. With disarming directness he said to Cotta one day, "…Help me to become a saint!" Cotta knew Lebbe meant every word of it - Vincent was too honest not to say what he meant. Cotta, a bit older, exercised a calming influence on the sometimes-overenthusiastic Vincent. The Egyptian possessed a deep love and knowledge of St. Paul, the Church's first great missionary. Sharing his knowledge with Vincent, he laid a Scriptural underpinning to Vincent's missionary spirituality. The fire and zeal of St. Paul now combined with the calm, deliberate dedication of St. Vincent de Paul to shape Vincent's approach to his life as a missionary priest.

Cotta, ordained in June 1898, joined the Vincentian mission in Madagascar, off Africa's east coast. The Egyptian would reenter Lebbe's life and play a crucial role in later events.

THE INVALID

About the same time as Cotta's ordination, Lebbe began to suffer a strange illness that caused general debilitation and dysentery. His superiors sent him to the Vincentian college at Dax, near the French coast, to continue his philosophy studies. There his condition worsened - he began to suffer pains in his chest and frequent nosebleeds. "I wonder," he worried, "if I have tuberculosis."

His fears were not so much that the disease might take his life. He had already expressed a desire for martyrdom. Rather, his worry rose out of the very real possibility his superiors would not permit him to be ordained and go to China.

For the next year Lebbe's health continued to deteriorate. In September 1990, seminary authorities advised him that his physical condition disqualified him as a candidate for the missions. They further advised him he could go to Rome and begin his studies in theology. "You can study," his superiors added kindly, "at your own pace." It seemed now as if Vincent's dreams of imitating his beloved Jean Gabriel Perboyre would never be realized.

At the same time Vincent's hopes for future martyrdom were being dashed, many Europeans were dying in China for less noble reasons. In 1900 Chinese patriots, outraged by the relentless greed and oppression of the Western nations that had secured, by manipulation and extortion, vast property holdings, called "concession," in various Chinese seaports and cities, rose in revolt against the Europeans and Americans. The frenzied Chinese massacred white men, women and children, set fire to Western business buildings, dock areas, and manufacturing plants. Because the Chinese revolutionaries, called "Boxers," viewed the Christian missionaries as symbols of European and American hypocrisy, they turned on them in bitter revenge. They drove Protestant ministers and their families, Catholic priests, Brothers and nuns from churches, schools, orphanages and hospitals. They murdered some; others were fortunate enough to escape to defense centers the Western powers quickly established in major Chinese cities. Western nations retaliated quickly by sending an army of fourteen thousand troops to quell the rebellion. The disciplined forces pounced upon the hapless rebels. The army cut an avenging swash of blood and fire through China and, in August 1900, entered Peking. Generals divided Peking into sectors and turned over a portion of the city to the troops of each participating nation. "The Chinese are now to be taught a final lesson," the officers advised their men. The troops rampaged through Peking, even then one of the world’s most beautiful cities, leaving a trail of pillage, rape and wanton murder. When all the horror ended, peace was restored and European flags flapped once more in the breeze over China. Thirty thousand Christians had died - and a million non-Christians.

ROMAN ENCOUNTER

Shortly after the Boxer Rebellion ended, Bishop Alphonse Favier, the French prelate of Peking, journeyed to Rome to report on the tragic events. He stayed at the Vincentian college where Vincent was studying. One evening after the Bishop gave an unusually vivid description of the Church's suffering during the revolt, Vincent approached him, with his customary enthusiasm and energy. Vincent pleaded with the Bishop to take him back to China with him. "Even if I can't be a priest, Your Excellency, I will learn the language and teach catechism." "Eh, well," said the old man, "you wish to work - come along. Just get permission from your Vincentian superior in Paris."

The Bishop himself advised Vincentian authorities in Paris that he would willingly accept young Lebbe even if his health was poor. "In China," the elderly prelate said, "we need every hand we can get!" On February 10, 1901, exactly five months after his superiors advised him to forget a missionary career, Vincent Lebbe sailed out of Marseilles on the S.S. Ernest Simons, China-bound.

While on the month-long voyage, a veteran missionary, Father Ponzi, introduced Vincent to the study of the Chinese language and customs. Vincent learned to write his name in Chinese letters. Eventually he translated his signature as "the thunder that sings in the distance." The name would someday be blessed and cursed throughout China.

PEKING

Vincent arrived at the Vincentian mission headquarters in Peking in late March 1901. Despite chronic eye trouble which had begun during his illness at Dax, Vincent received permission to continue his studies for the priesthood. Perhaps someday he might be ordained.

At the Vincentian mission headquarters in Peking, Vincent encountered the deep division between Western missionaries and Chinese clergy that characterized the Church in China. In the dining room, Chinese clergy sat at one set of tables; Europeans at another. Both elements desired this. The Chinese preferred their own food and conversation in their native tongue to Western food and language. Few missionaries spoke Chinese very well; they preferred French in dinner conversation. Some missionaries never learned to read Chinese.

It was the heady days of the "White Man's Burden." Europeans and Americans, too, judged themselves a superior breed whose destiny it was to lift inferior races (black, brown, red and yellow) out of their ignorance. Missionaries, products of Western civilization, absorbed this same attitude. They viewed the Chinese as mere children in the Faith.

Missionaries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had indeed given some consideration to elevating Chinese priests to the hierarchy. But the hierarchy of Lebbe's early career, composed exclusively of Westerners, judged such a step premature.

"When I was a young missionary," old Bishop Favier commented one day to Vincent, "I used to think we should have Chinese Bishops. But as the years went on," he commented sadly, "I became convinced they are not yet ready."

Another factor that deepened the gulf between the Orientals and Westerners was the strong connection between the French government and the Catholic Church. While in France the anti-clerical government scorned the Church, in China the French government judged itself the protector of all Catholic missions and their personnel. The British served in the same capacity for the Protestant missionary effort. The French government urged each Catholic missionary to carry French passports; this document would entitle him to call upon the French Consul for protection. It also entitled the missionary to special privileges in Chinese law.

The French were all too ready to "protect" the missionaries and often used armed force to do so. French authorities would use each incident of intervention on behalf of the missionaries to squeeze new concessions in law or property from the hapless Chinese. No wonder the Chinese spoke of two devils: Number One Devils were the foreigners and their missionaries; Number Two Devils were Chinese who had become Christians.

Vincent's finely honed sense of justice was outraged by the whole atmosphere. He was troubled by the dependence of the Church on the French government and even more dismayed by the readiness of French officials to exploit the situation. He had written, back in the seminary days in Paris: "We are to penetrate the modern world - not as a counterforce but rather to shape and guide it according to the light of faith and sound reason." From what he could determine, the missionary effort in China was failing because the missionaries were not entering into the Chinese world. They preferred to shape it according to the European models which the Chinese detested.

From the very beginning of his days in Peking, Vincent determined to join the Chinese world. "I know if I remain a European," he wrote, "I will end up a corpse."

Thus he recreated with Chinese student priests, took long walks with them, insisted they converse in Chinese with him, and cajoled them into teaching him both to read and write the language. The young Chinese clerics were delighted.

Since eye trouble continued to plague him, Vincent's superiors sent him for a rest to An-kia-chwang, a village south of Peking. Because the town was all Christian, Boxers had struck viciously there during the rebellion. The Christians, however, well-armed and well-organized, drove off their attackers. But even now, guerrillas living in the hills sporadically raided An-kia-chwang. "It seems strange," Vincent wrote home, "to be in a theatre of war that is still smoking." Despite this, the village, with its Chinese architecture and, above all, its people, charmed Vincent. The only thing that disturbed him was the architectural style of the church right in the middle of town. "Built," he complained, "like a European church." Like all the other churches staffed by French missionaries, the church at Chwang flew the French flag on Sundays and holidays.

In the fall Vincent returned to Peking to resume his studies. His eye condition worsened. He made a novena to Blessed Jean Gabriel Perboyre, seeking a cure. His eyes cleared and remained sound until his death. Bishop Favier, who genuinely liked Lebbe despite his espousal of the Chinese cause, gave proper permissions, and Vincent was ordained a priest, October 28, 1901.

THE CHURCH IN CHINA

The Chinese Catholic Church that young Father Lebbe was ordained to serve had a long history. When Franciscan missionaries arrived in China in the thirteenth century, they were surprised to find Christian communities dating back several centuries. A form of Christianity called Nestorianism had been introduced into China, probably in the seventh century.

The Chinese of the thirteenth century received the friars kindly and several thousand accepted Baptism. The Franciscans established a hierarchy, built churches and schools and even enjoyed honored positions in the court of the great Khan. The Khans were Mongolian overlords. Under Ghengis Khan and his son Ogedei, the Mongols conquered China, Persia, swept across Russia, occupied Poland and Hungary. The very word "Tartar" - a synonym for Mongol - struck such terror in the European heart that Pope Innocent IV ordered a new petition in the Litany of the Saints: "From the fury of the Tartars, deliver us, O Lord!" Just as the Tartars were about to deluge all of Western Europe in fire and blood, Ogedei died. With his death in 1241, the Tartar hordes returned to Mongolia to elect a new leader.

In the middle of the fourteenth century the Chinese people rebelled against their Mongolian overlords, threw out the Khans and installed their own rulers, called the Mings. The Ming dynasty, determined to eradicate all traces of foreign influence, began a systematic persecution of the Church. So thoroughly did they ravage the Christians that when European missionaries returned in the sixteenth century all significant traces of Christianity had disappeared.

When the Jesuit Father Matteo Ricci led a movement in the sixteenth century to adapt Christianity to Chinese customs, he came under severe attack from Rome. Conservative elements among Franciscans and other Orders who worked with the poorer Chinese, felt such a possibility would dilute Christianity beyond recognition. Ricci and the Jesuits had been enjoying phenomenal success in their mission efforts among Chinese scholars and the wealthier classes. At the end of the sixteenth century the Church numbered some three hundred thousand members in China. When Rome condemned the adaptation policy in 1715, Chinese Catholics and non-Catholics, sensitive to the beauty of their own culture and civilization, were profoundly insulted. Christians were killed. Prices were put on the heads of certain missionaries as agents of foreign governments. The sorest trials, however, were yet to come.

THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN

In the early sixteenth century Portuguese traders established, at gunpoint, a colony at Ningpo. The Chinese, who did not possess firearms, were unable, at first, to repel the invaders who wrested their lands from them. Soon after the conquest, Catholic missionaries arrived. In Chinese eyes, these priests, by their presence, approved the seizure of Chinese lands.

Predictably the Chinese waited patiently and, in 1545, turning on their conquerors, massacred twelve thousand Christians, most of whom were Chinese. The damage, however, had been done. The cause of Christianity and the foreign gun had been irrevocably linked in the Chinese mind.

Later events only reinforced the unfortunate association. In ensuing years, foreign power after foreign power pounced upon China to wrench privileges of ports and property, called concessions, from her. As we previously noted, the missionaries who accompanied these incursions often sought the protection and assistance of the occupying nations.

Alongside the missionaries' confused leadership and the bad example of many Western Christians, were always zealous priests, nuns and Brothers, who had no other desire than to love and serve the Chinese. It was these hidden and forgotten heroes who kept the flickering flame of faith alive in China.

Bishop Jarlin, Bishop Favier's assistant, who ordained Vincent, took the new priest on a Confirmation tour through the Peking Vicariate, which was as big as Belgium and Holland combined. Twelve million Chinese inhabited this district; thirty-five thousand of them were Catholics.

For three weeks Vincent heard confessions, baptized and instructed. The tour was for him a precious learning experience. The effects of the Boxer Revolution were everywhere. He met Chinese who bore in their bodies the scars of persecution; others whose dear ones had died for the Faith. Their simple, unpretentious love of Catholicism touched him so deeply that he wrote home to his brother: "…You can't imagine what my life is like… what tremendous joy it gives me… I have come to understand how the first Apostles felt and how St. Paul could write those wonderful letters…"

THE COUNTRY PRIEST

Shortly after the year 1902 began, Bishop Jarlin appointed Vincent assistant pastor of Ta-k'ow-t'un, a rural mission sixty miles east of Peking. Now the new priest had full opportunity to carry out the brave words he wrote to a friend in Rome: "We only get to know people by becoming one with them; we only win them by giving ourselves. God is my witness that I shall spare nothing to gain that end…"

He spared no effort to become Chinese. He studied the written language, paying particular attention to the classics and practiced conversation. He wore the garment of the poor Chinese, a cheap cloth robe. He adopted a pigtail and grew a beard.

"I'm out on the road all the time," he wrote, "on horseback, in carts, going from north to south, east to west… one day feasting, one day fasting." His letters reflected his enthusiasm and energy. Even his weak health proved no obstacle. "How marvelous it is," he exclaimed in the same letter, "to live for God."

With his pigtail flying in the wind behind him as he bicycled between the rice paddies, he became a picturesque figure in the country districts. He was full of energy and good humor. He spent happy hours sitting and smoking his long Chinese pipe with his farmer Christians.

The Chinese peasant is noted for his hard and steady work. During planting, growing and harvesting seasons, the farmers worked seven days a week. Father Lebbe challenged his Christians to work only six. "God will do the rest," he advised them. After some hesitation, one tiny congregation of Christians, in simple faith, accepted Lebbe's direction. When harvest time came, a disease attacked the crops. Although the crops of the pagans died, the Christians' crops survived.

TIENTSIN

In September 1906, Bishop Jarlin, now Vicar Apostolic after Favier's death, appointed Vincent director of the Catholic mission in Tientsin, North China's second largest city. Tientsin boasted a million people, among whom were fifteen thousand Chinese Catholics. Jarlin, fully aware of Lebbe's enthusiasm for things Chinese, warned him that Tientsin was not the countryside. The city contained many European concessions and a consequent Chinese hatred of things European. "Keep out of political questions and do priestly work only," the Bishop ordered him. "The situation is delicate."

Delicate indeed! For five days after he arrived in Tientsin, Vincent sat in the rectory mission waiting for a Chinese Christian to call. Not one came. Lebbe couldn't stand the quiet any longer and went out to find his scattered and concealed flock. And so he went from Christian home to Christian home, observing the elaborate Chinese etiquette, speaking the language well, dealing with each person as a fellow human being. He made every effort to meet Tientsin's Chinese officialdom, its intellectuals, merchants and tradesmen. He extended great concern and charity to the poor and needy, whether Christian or not.

His zeal paid off. All elements of Tientsin's society soon made their way to the Vincentian mission to visit Father Lebbe. He opened a small mission center in the Chinese part of town, and more and more Chinese responded to his efforts. They came to him for help of every sort, spiritual and material, and he tried to respond. Moneys that he needed for his charities did not come from European sources alone, but in a great measure from the Chinese themselves. Garbed in his simple Chinese robe, he pedaled all over town, never ashamed to beg from anybody, particularly wealthy Chinese. He soon became a living legend in the city.

In July 1907, he organized a banquet for all his Chinese mission leaders. The banquet was extraordinary because European missionaries and Chinese Christians had never previously sat down together at the same table. Bishop Jarlin summoned Father Lebbe to Peking after the banquet and gave him a two-day dressing down for permitting the fraternization. "You are showing off," the Bishop charged, "and I want it stopped."

Why didn't the Bishop just remove him? Jarlin secretly admired Father Lebbe and perhaps envied his courage. Bewildered, Lebbe returned to Tientsin and continued to do what he thought best. He encouraged various Chinese religious organizations, sponsored a vigorous convert movement called "The Propagation of the Faith," and laid the groundwork for the first Catholic Action movement in China. He also established a number of lecture halls in the city. These provided a forum for Chinese priests and laymen to speak regarding contemporary Chinese problems.

In January 1912, he published the first issue of a Chinese Catholic weekly newspaper, The Sunday Paper. The weekly paper was an immediate success. Everyone was delighted by it. Everyone except Bishop Jarlin, who ordered the missionaries not to read it, even though he had given permission for its publication. "I didn't know Father Lebbe would publish the paper," the Bishop claimed. "I thought only lay people would do that!" In the end, Jarlin gave a lukewarm approbation of it. Soon after, the Tientsin district was established as a separate diocese and the new Bishop, Paul Dumond, gave the paper his enthusiastic support.

RETURN TO EUROPE

Under the new Bishop, Lebbe's apostolic work expanded and flourished. Although Christians composed only one percent of Tientsin's population, they made their presence felt in every phase of the city's life. In the first Parliamentary elections held since the establishment of the new Chinese Republic in 1911, Christians gained twenty percent of the seats in Parliament for the Tientsin district.

Things were going well enough for Father Lebbe to return to Europe. He had been in China for twelve years and looked forward to his return home.

He spent about six months in Europe raising funds for his projects, particularly for the schools and institutions of higher learning he planned at Tientsin. Wherever he could get ears to hear, he would speak of the need to hand over the Chinese Church to the Chinese clergy.

Two prominent European churchmen who listened to Lebbe's pleas were Monsignor Vanneufville, Rector of the French Seminary in Rome, and Cardinal Mercier, Belgium's heroic prelate. These men put Father Lebbe in contact with Cardinals Bisletti and Gotti of the Roman Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith, the Vatican office charged with the proper conduct of the Church's missionary effort.

In these highest circles the missioner continued to hammer out his theme - the Catholic Church in China must become a Chinese Church, if it is to take a firm root in the nation. Now it is a Western Church.

Early in 1914 he returned to Tientsin. Hundreds of Chinese crowded to the railroad station; and when he descended from the train, they burst into applause and shouted for joy.

He was back at work immediately, adding more and more activities to a list that would wear out a dozen men. In recognition of his highly successful work, Bishop Dumond somewhat uneasily appointed him Vicar General of the diocese of Tientsin.

The following fall he promoted the First National Congress of Catholic Action at Tientsin. Chinese Catholics and missionaries traveled from all over China to attend. Predictably, the Congress was well organized and drew national attention. At the Congress, Lebbe drove home the point that the Chinese had to be responsible for their own Church.

In October 1915, Lebbe published the first Chinese Catholic daily, which he entitled The Social Welfare. Although published under Catholic auspices the paper aimed at both Christian and pagan readership. The Social Welfare carried news of general interest, advertising of all kinds, and an editorial page. Lebbe wrote the daily editorial.

In Lebbe's mind the newspaper was to be a vehicle of truth. Whenever he complained that the Church in China was too closely associated with the French government, fellow missionaries would respond, "But who will protect us?" For Lebbe, truth was the greatest protection, and The Social Welfare would publish it. Within a few months of publication, Lebbe's daily was the most prestigious in North China.

THE LAO-SI-KAI AFFAIR

Since his elevation in 1912, Bishop Dumond had had his own dreams. One of them was to provide the Tientsin diocese with a suitably large cathedral and commodious Bishop's palace - constructed, of course, in European fashion. To achieve this, he purchased a valuable piece of property in a newly developing district of Tientsin. The area was so promising that the French Consul had been attempting to wrest a section of it from Tientsin municipal authorities for several years. The Chinese refused to grant the "concession." But the Tientsin Municipal authorities willingly sold the property to the Bishop for the Cathedral and the palace. After the Bishop had title to the property, the Consul dispatched French police to guard a new piece of roadway that lay in front of the cathedral. He felt justified in so doing because the Mission Procurator had entered into a secret deal with the Consul. The priest had promised to cede the road and the land alongside it to the French flag if, in return, the Consul would exempt the mission from any taxes when the district became French. The presence of the French police, the attempt of the Consul to levy taxes on the Chinese who had shops along the new roadway, and the secret deal itself, which eventually was revealed, threw Tientsin's Chinese population into an uproar. The Chinese who had shops and residence along the road refused to move, and Chinese police remained, despite the presence of the French. So far the land grab remained a standoff. Tientsin Chinese were furious. "Tricked again," they cried, "by those lying French and their missionaries!"

The Peking government protested. When Lebbe's newspaper, The Social Welfare, published an open letter asking the Consul to drop his claims, that gentleman, outraged, demanded that Bishop Dumond silence the paper. Bishop Dumond ordered The Social Welfare to observe strict neutrality in the matter. Lebbe obeyed. By so doing, of course, he left only the non-Christian press in Tientsin to defend the Chinese rights.

To intimidate the Bishop and pound the missionaries into line, the French Consul conscripted one of the French priests. Because it was during World War I, the Consul was within his rights. He ordered the priest into uniform and assigned him to guard duty in the French concession.

Despite the galling provocation, Bishop Dumond ordered all the missionaries to remain strictly neutral in the affair - to side neither with the Chinese nor the French.

Lebbe was furious and broken-hearted at the same time. He wrote a long personal letter to the French Minister in Peking, Monsieur Conty, begging him to intervene. "The honor of France is at stake," he wrote; "are we, for the sake of a bit of land, to surrender a heritage of esteem and affection?"

Conty returned the letter to Bishop Dumond, and in an angry note to the prelate, blamed him for allowing such an insolent and near traitorous letter to be written by one of his priests.

ON THE CARPET

Dumond called Lebbe to his office and gave him a tongue-lashing and ordered him to say no more to anyone about the Lao-Si-Kai affair.

After the interview Lebbe wrote his Bishop and asked to be sent away from Tientsin. "I beg you," he wrote, "do not leave me in such a position that I have neither to disobey you or act in a way I regard as contrary to what my duty demands."

A few days later, his Vincentian superiors notified Father Lebbe that he was transferred to the neighboring diocese of Chengting, and ordered him to remain there with his old friend, Bishop de Vienne. The year was 1916. He was to say nothing to the press and to spend his time in Chengting working with the poor. His superiors advised the priest to consult with Bishop de Vienne concerning his future.

Bishop de Vienne trusted and admired Lebbe but admittedly did not understand him. Nevertheless, he supported him bravely in Lebbe's darkest hour. Vincent was disheartened, depressed and discouraged. For the first few weeks in Chengting, he kept to his room, but Bishop de Vienne gently nudged him back into apostolic activity. Within months Lebbe was in full swing, adapting his Tientsin methods to Chengting. But then de Vienne received a scathing letter from the Vincentian superior, Father Desrumaux. "We did not send Father Lebbe there for full apostolic work," Desrumaux wrote. "You make a laughing stock of Bishop Dumond by making Lebbe so important in Chengting."

In the meanwhile, back at Tientsin the Christians and non-Christians were dismayed by Lebbe's abrupt departure. They sought explanation from Bishop Dumond and Vincentian authorities. A delegation even journeyed into Vincentian headquarters at Peking on his behalf. But they received little consolation from either source.

Some priests headed by Père Cotta, who had left Madagascar and joined the Chinese missions a few years after Lebbe arrived in China, wrote to Vincentian authorities in Paris and then to proper authorities in Rome. After Lebbe was with Bishop de Vienne for some time, the Vincentian Council of the Northern Province restudied the Tientsin affair and exonerated Lebbe. The Paris headquarters of the Vincentians requested Lebbe be returned to the Tientsin diocese.

Bishop Dumond acquiesced and wrote Lebbe at Chengting, inviting him to return and appointing him an assistant at Hokia, the smallest and most remote parish in the Tientsin diocese.

"When you pass through Tientsin on your way to Hokia you are not to leave the railway station," the Bishop ordered. When news of the new appointment broke in Tientsin and other parts of Christian and non-Christian circles in China, letters flew to Rome and to Vincentian headquarters in Peking and Paris. Father Cotta and Father Yang, a Chinese priest, organized a formal complaint against Bishop Dumond and the Vincentian superiors. They sent this to Rome, and it was signed by nineteen of Tientsin's twenty-six priests. Accompanying the letter was a full report, giving the complete background on the case. The report indicated that Lebbe was being persecuted because he resisted "Europeanizing" the Chinese Catholic Church.

While all this was happening, the Lao-Si-Kai affair took a nasty turn when French troops occupied the area, drove out the Chinese police, and claimed the territory for France. From far-away Hokia, Lebbe bombarded: "If I were a civilian, I would give everything I possess to buy gunpowder and cannon balls and die in Lao-Si-Kai… But since we are priests let us swear once again to die in Rome rather than keep silent in the face of evil."

PASSION SUNDAY

Lebbe's old friend, Monsignor Vanneufville, Rector of the French Seminary in Rome, advised Lebbe by letter that his case was receiving full consideration by proper authorities in Rome. In March the Vincentians sent a special Visitator, Father Guilloux, to Tientsin to investigate the complaints in the Roman letter against Bishop Dumond. After some interviews, Guilloux called all the priests together (including Lebbe) and excoriated them. They were, the Visitator charged, by siding with the Chinese, destroying a three-hundred-year-long honorable tradition of mission service, and promoting a possible schism in the Chinese Catholic Church.

As Lebbe listened to the Visitator, he knew beyond doubt a reconciliation was impossible. As long as Europeans felt sole responsibility for the missions, there would never be a Chinese Catholic Church.

Bewildered and depressed, Lebbe returned to Hokia. He would continue to conscientiously tend his little corner of the vineyard and wait for the Lord to show him what to do. Passion Sunday was coming and with it Holy Week. There were Catholic Action meetings to plan, instruction centers to organize, Masses to say.

On the Saturday evening before Passion Sunday he received the fateful note removing him from Hokia in the Tientsin diocese and sending him to a mission a thousand miles away. He spent the night in agony; should he capitulate or not? On Passion Sunday he had made up his mind. He would remain obedient unto death. He wrote his superiors and accepted the transfer without a murmur or sign of rebellion.

Regarding the anguish he wrote to a friend, "I am writing in an abyss of agony."

He was only to learn that many other priests who organized the letter of complaint to Rome were also transferred that same weekend to posts far from Tientsin diocese. Lebbe's movement for a Chinese Catholic Church was stopped dead.

THE SOUTH

Once more Father Lebbe was on the move. This time he was to go to Ning-po in South China. His new superior, Bishop Reynaud, was a man full of compassion and love for the Chinese. He welcomed Father Lebbe and respected him for his accomplishments and also for his love of religious obedience.

With Reynaud's backing, Lebbe was soon repeating his Tientsin successes. Reynaud appointed him Director of the Shao-king district - a major post.

Rome continued to keep abreast of events in China and express its deep concern about the extent of European influence in the missionary effort. On November 30, 1919, Pope Benedict XV issued an important statement regarding the issue. In brief the Pope called upon missionaries to labor for a native clergy, native hierarchy, a native Church. He condemned the attitude of missionaries who "think rather of their earthly country than of the heavenly." Thus they made the Church appear to the people among whom they labored, the Pope continued, "as a religion that belongs to some foreign nation rather than the Kingdom of Heaven."

The letter landed like a bomb among the French Bishops in China. They reacted, however, predictably. "The Holy Father has been misinformed," they complained. "To follow out his program in China would right now provoke a schism."

Lebbe, of course, now full of new hope and new strength, experienced new frustration. He knew the Bishops would foot-drag in complying with the Pope's directions and he was right. "In fifty years," one learned Bishop announced, "these directions of the Pope might possibly be fulfilled."

EUROPE

Rome continued its interest in the Chinese question by appointing a series of Visitators who journeyed through the missions and sent a steady stream of reports back to the Vatican. Two of the Visitators, both members of the French Foreign Mission Society, Bishop de Fouquet and Archbishop de Guébriant, bluntly advised Lebbe to leave China if he wished Rome to consecrate Chinese Bishops. "You have become a center of controversy," the Visitators told him. "There are few missionaries who support you. If you go, tempers will calm and we can approach the question in a more reasonable manner."

When Vincentian authorities offered in 1920, to send Lebbe to Europe, to organize the large number of Chinese studying in the continent's universities, he accepted. Although Lebbe understood his superiors were only too glad to have him leave China, he was not adverse to going. The job needed doing and the trip would enable him to renew contacts in Rome.

For the next seven years he crisscrossed Europe in search of young Chinese. He helped them with room, board, and tuition; organized them into groups, made contact with many young people who eventually became their nation's leaders. Always and everywhere he was their beloved pastor, concerned only with their best interests.

During these years he pressed his campaign for a native hierarch wherever he could get an audience.

While his Vincentian superiors in Paris supported his work among the Chinese students, they took a dim view of lobbying for Chinese Bishops. Indeed they forbade him to go to Rome. But when, in 1920, Cardinal Mercier, deeply interested in the Chinese question, summoned Lebbe to Rome, his superiors permitted him to go. Then an unbelievable chain of events unfolded. Mercier sent Lebbe to Cardinal Willem Van Rossum, head of the Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith. The interview concluded with Van Rossum requesting names of some possible Chinese priests as candidates for Bishops. Cardinal Van Rossum thanked Lebbe for his years of suffering and added, "It was your obedience that saved everything… that was what God gave his blessing to."

A few days after Christmas 1920, Pope Benedict summoned Lebbe for a private audience. The Pope assured the missionary he would follow up with the appointment of the Chinese Bishops. Lebbe could hardly believe all this was happening. "There are hours in life," he later exclaimed, "that can compensate for years of suffering." Benedict was to die in 1922, and Pius XI become Pope before the appointments came through. It took four years, fraught with dashed hopes, before Pope Pius XI consecrated six Chinese Bishops in St. Peter's.

Lebbe, because he had no special place for the ceremony, arrived early at St. Peter's to get a good seat. He wept quietly throughout the Mass. He was twenty-five years a priest on the very day of the consecration. No missionary could ever be given a more magnificent anniversary gift.

At a banquet that evening three Chinese Bishops sat at Lebbe's right, three at his left. He was in his proper place.

RETURN TO THE ORIENT

Lebbe returned to China in 1927 and was assigned Diocesan Director of Catholic Action, in the diocese of Bishop Sun, one of the newly consecrated Chinese. He worked with great zest and joy in rural Hopeh, Sun's diocese. European Bishops and missionaries, however, ostracized him. He bore this with grace, and he continued pioneering.

In 1928 he founded two religious Orders; one for men, called the Little Brothers of St. John the Baptist, the other for women, named the Little Sisters of St. Theresa of the Child Jesus. He drew up a way of life for each that was strict and austere. He led the way by the example of his own life of prayer and penance. On Christmas 1933, he decided to leave the Vincentians and became head of the Order of Little Brothers.

Although he was fifty-six years old, he continued moving about Hopeh on his bicycle. He was known to pedal a hundred miles a day. Now, however, he began to fall off the bike from time to time, badly injuring knees and arms. He underwent two operations as a result of these falls, but he continued to bicycle. "It is," he stated, "the poor man's manner of travel."

WAR AND REVOLUTION

In 1931 the Japanese invaded Manchuria and set off a series of wars involving China for the next twenty-five years. When all the fighting was done, China emerged as a Communist nation.

Lebbe, of course, didn't know that. All he knew when war broke out was that his people were suffering. During the endless fighting that swept back and forth over the tortured land, Lebbe played a major part in treating the wounded and war refugees. He recruited hundreds of Chinese Christians and pagans to serve as stretcher-bearers. Indeed before the war concluded, his ban of stretcher-bearers numbered twenty thousand. Lebbe, no pacifist, urged the Chinese to fight bravely for their country. At Chiang Kai-Shek's request he traveled through the countryside rallying the people to the defense of their land against the Japanese invaders. Although he refused to carry a weapon of any kind and dismissed one of his Little Brothers for packing a revolver, he trained guerrilla bands to strike against the Japanese. They proved tough and effective.

Stretcher bearing was exhausting work. In one mountain battle the bearers had to carry the wounded as far as ten miles before they could get help. They rescued eight hundred men; they also buried seven hundred dead. Despite all the backbreaking work, Lebbe insisted he and the Brothers recite the prayers of the Divine Office daily. The hardship and danger eventually took its toll of poor Father Lebbe. The bicycle falls now made their effects felt in arthritic pain; he was often feverish with malaria. He was close to exhaustion.

In the spring of 1940, Father Lebbe and six of his Little Brothers were arrested by elements of the Eighth Communist Chinese Army. Up until this point Lebbe enjoyed good relations with the Chinese Communists. But as relations between the Reds and Chiang Kai-Shek deteriorated, the Communists, who had begged Lebbe to join them, began to fear him and his Brothers as agents of Chiang Kai-Shek.

Although the Reds did not treat their prisoners cruelly, Lebbe's health deteriorated rapidly during the several weeks he was a Communist hostage. Finally, when Chiang Kai-Shek threatened to free Lebbe by force, the Communists released him and his group of Little Brothers.

After three weeks' walk through Japanese lines, Lebbe arrived safely at Loyang. He was worn out. His internal organs, his kidneys, liver and stomach were all swollen. He was full of jaundice. "Look," he joked, "I am finally yellow. I'm no longer a white man."

The physical anguish was compounded when he discovered the Reds had murdered twelve of his Little Brothers. Lebbe could not believe that the Chinese, even the Communists, could be so cruel as to harm these gentle, courageous men.

Chiang Kai-Shek sent a plane to bring Lebbe to Chungking. There in the home of a Chinese friend, surrounded by Chinese, he died, June 24, 1940, the feast of St. John the Baptist. He was sixty-three. No one made particular note at the time, but June 24 was also the feast of Blessed Jean Gabriel Perboyre. It was Perboyre who had moved the eleven-year-old Freddy years ago to pronounce, "I want to go to China and die a martyr's death."