Saints and the State

In a solemn ceremony during the 2000 Jubilee Year, on October 1, the Feast of Saint Teresa of Lisieux, Patroness of Missions, Pope John Paul II canonized 120 Chinese martyrs. The group of newly declared saints included thirty-three foreign missionaries and eighty-seven Chinese, their ages at death ranged from seven to seventy-nine, and they included bishops, priests, nuns, seminarians, and lay people. Although one died as late as 1931, the others had been martyred during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, more than seventy of them during the Boxer Rebellion. It was a joyful event for Chinese Catholics around the world, a public recognition by the universal church that the Chinese church was equal to Catholic communities around the world in the ability to produce men and women of heroic virtue. Fifty-two Chinese cardinals and bishops from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other parts of the world concelebrated the Papal Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica that day. Four thousand Chinese Catholics from around the world attended, including some from mainland China who already happened to be residing in Europe. ¹