1938 - Gerard Donovan

February 1938

Huairen, Liaoning

Gerard Donovan.

Gerard A. Donovan was born in the Pittsburgh suburb of Monongahela, in the state of Pennsylvania, on October 14, 1904. He was the youngest of seven children, raised in a devout Catholic home. After graduating from the Maryknoll Seminary in New York, Donovan left for his assignment in northeast China in the Spring of 1931.[1]

Toward the end of 1937 the internal conditions of China had deteriorated so badly that the leaders of the Maryknoll Mission sent telegrams to all of its 600 American workers stating, ‘Strongly urge avoid all unnecessary travel until conditions safer.’ Possessing a quick wit, Donovan had replied to the mission’s warning by writing, “You should have seen how happy my mule was when I showed him your telegram.”[2] Donovan was a popular missionary, and was once described by a colleague as “a bespectacled man with a shock of hair and with an eternal smile on his face.”[3]

Gerard Donovan was stationed across the river from Fushun City in Liaoning Province. One morning, as he was kneeling in prayer at the mission, a strange man appeared in the sanctuary. The man motioned for the priest to come to the side, where a pistol was produced and pointed at the priest’s face. A 17-year-old altar boy, Francis Liu, walked into the ro0om and was also threatened with the weapon. Donovan and Liu were bound and carried away as hostages. Before they fled into the hills a church worker was handed a ransom note for $50,000.

For the next 11 days Donovan and Liu were marched across Liaoning Province at gun point, being allowed to rest during the day time with their hands and legs tied up. Being mid-winter with temperatures well below freezing, the captured duo were so cold they tried to shield their bodies with grass and leaves.

The bandits finally joined up with the rest of their gang who congratulated them on their successful capture. Donovan told them they were wasting their time because it was the policy of the Mission never to pay a ransom. The bandit leader thought the priest was bluffing, and said, “We shall get $50,000, or we shall have to choke you and leave your body for the wolves.”[4] After two weeks no money had been paid for Donovan’s release, so the bandits sent Liu back to Fushun with detailed instructions. Mgr. Lane sent a note to the leader of the bandits. It said:

“It is difficult for us to understand why you have taken him since he and our other priests have left their parents, their homes and their country to come to your country in order to do good and particularly to help the poor. You are asking $50,000 for the release of a man who has sacrificed his life for you and your people. You ask this money of a religious society which gives all it has to charity to help the poor, the old men and women, the orphans and the sick, to educate boys and girls. I cannot feel that you understand all this and yet demand money for the release of Father Donovan.”[5]

Weeks and months passed with no word on Gerard Donovan’s whereabouts. Thousands of people prayed for his safety every day. The Vatican requested weekly reports, while the U.S. State Department and numerous overseas newspapers followed incident. Finally, on February 11, 1938, Donovan’s body was discovered on a snow-covered mountainside near Huairen, 62 miles (100 km) from Fushun. A missionary identified the body, and found

“a thick rope around his neck, with the stick used to twist it still in place. The rope had bitten an inch into his flesh and the mark still showed. On his temple was a bad bruise: evidently a bandit had mercifully struck him unconscious to escape the pain of strangulation. He had been barefoot. From the condition of his legs and hands and face it was apparent that wolves and wild dogs and rats had been at him. He was cold and stiff; a doctor estimated he had been dead a week or ten days before he was found.”[6]

The slain missionary’s body was placed inside a coffin and shipped home to New York for burial. Eight hundred mourners followed the coffin to the burial plot at Maryknoll. Many stirring speeches were made by those who knew him best. Why the bandits had chosen to kill the 33-year-old American priest remains a mystery,

“but those who knew Donovan during his lifetime and now knew the circumstances of his death were convinced of one thing: he had not been merely the victim of hunted kidnappers: he had been the victim of his priesthood. This made him a martyr. And that was the glory of his death.”[7]

1. For a biography of Donovan, see John Joseph Considine, When the Sorghum Was High: A Narrative Biography of Father Gerard A. Donovan of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a Maryknoll Missioner Slain by Bandits in Manchukuo (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1940).
2. Kittler, The Maryknoll Fathers, 211.
3. Kerrison, Bishop Walsh of Maryknoll, 247.
4. James Keller & Meyer Berger, Men of Maryknoll (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1943), 121.
5. Kittler, The Maryknoll Fathers, 214.
6. Kittler, The Maryknoll Fathers, 215-216.
7. Kittler, The Maryknoll Fathers, 217.