1972 - Joseph Zhou Jishi

1972

Nanchang, Jiangxi

Joseph Zhou Jishi was a highly-gifted Chinese Lazarist Archbishop. Born in 1892, he spoke French fluently as a result of having studied in Paris. It was said of Zhou, “His intellectual gifts as well as his remarkable personality made him one of the outstanding figures of the Chinese clergy. It was to him that the Communists turned when they wanted to nominate a Pope for China.”[1]

The one thing that infuriated the Communists the most about Catholicism was their allegiance to the Pope, and what they saw as foreign imperialism by the Vatican. To combat this threat the government dreamed up the idea of appointing a Chinese ‘Pope of the Patriotic Church of Communist China,’ through whom they could control Catholics throughout the country and undermine the influence of the Vatican. When the government approached Archbishop Zhou to see if he was interested in taking up this new position, he mockingly stated,

“Thank you for your visit. Your idea is praiseworthy, but it is impossible for me to be Pope of Communist China, since Communist China is too small to have a Pope. If you could propose me as Pope of the Universal Church, I would willingly accept. Otherwise, it is useless to discuss the matter.”[2]

This reply infuriated the Communists, and they decided to make an example of him. Zhou was arrested on May 3, 1951 and put through a series of public ‘trials’. He was then arrested, handcuffed, and thrown into prison. Despite months of indoctrination and brainwashing, Joseph Zhou Jishi’s mind was still too sharp for his enemies and he frequently out-argued them with his wisdom and irrefutable logic. China had already broken off all contact with the Vatican after the Communists assumed power, so when they tried to make Zhou sign a statement renouncing his political relations with the Vatican, he replied that “since these political relations did not exist, he could not break them off. He added that it was like asking him to get a divorce when he was not even married.”[3] No matter what arguments they used on the archbishop, he was able to refute their efforts to make him join the Catholic Patriotic Association.

To make their case against Zhou the government arrested a female nurse from the Catholic hospital and spent several months torturing her into agreeing to accuse Zhou of having sex with her. At the trial, however, this sister “confined herself to repeating the archbishop’s own words, so that while seeming to accuse him, she actually broadcast the message of Christ.”[4] The day for announcing the sentence of the Archbishop of Nanchang arrived. Huge placards were erected throughout the city. He was sentenced to life in a prison labor camp, and was immediately taken away. For the next 21 years Joseph Zhou Jishi remained in the prison camp, working for between 14 and 16 hours a day, seven days per week. In 1972 news filtered out of China that the faithful Archbishop had died, at the age of 80.

1. Monsterleet, Martyrs in China, 45.
2. Cited in an article on the www.tboyle.net website.
3. Monsterleet, Martyrs in China, 46.
4. Monsterleet, Martyrs in China, 47.