1951 - Father Wang

June 1951

Sichuan

The year of 1951 witnessed a pathetic attempt by the Communist government to bring the Catholic Church under its control. They released a document with thousands of signatures of Catholic leaders and laymen who had allegedly “seen the error of their ways” and had energetically renounced the Pope in favour of joining the new government-sanctioned Catholic Church in China.

The farcical document stated, for example, that over 500 of 750 Catholics in Guangyuan County of Sichuan had signed, but Guangyuan was a remote town and making independent research at the time was virtually impossible. In the city of Chongqing 695 prominent Catholics were meant to have signed, with another 894 in Nanchang, etc. The document was intended to undermine the confidence of Catholics, and to make them think it would be a good idea to embrace the government-sanctioned church like so many of their leaders had supposedly already done.

The Chongqing version of the document was sent around China and the world, and came to be known as the Chongqing Manifesto. It revealed much of the bitterness the Communists felt against foreigners in general and Christians in particular, and was quoted with glee by left-wing sympathizers. In part it stated,

“During the last hundred years’ history of our country, the invasion of imperialism, by a series of unequal treaties, placed an iron chain around the neck of the Chinese people, and degraded China to the weak state of semi-colonialism and semi-feudalism. Imperialism used religion as a tool of this invasion, and in order to realize the secret aim of invasion, abused the privilege of propagating faith freely in China…. We have to liquidate those elements in the Church who are ready to serve imperialism, in order to delete all trace of imperialism. We must strive valiantly to realize this aim of renewal in the shortest period of time.”[1]

This ploy tricked very few Catholics. Many leaders whose names were listed on the document immediately denied they had ever signed it. One of them was Father Wang of Sichuan Province. The priest stated that

“his characters and seal were on the paper shown, but that they had been placed there, without his knowledge, by a traitorous catechist. Imprisonment, torture, every resource of the Red statesmen failed to shake the insistence of Father Wang that he had had nothing to do with the [government] church and that he would not join it.”[2]

Wang’s heroic stand for truth greatly angered the Communists, especially as Premier Zhou Enlai himself had publicly cited Wang as an example of a Catholic priest who had renounced his faith and joined the Communist cause. In mid-June of 1951 Wang was arrested and executed for his unwillingness to cooperate. Wang’s life and testimony continued to speak loudly, giving a strong example to other believers of how to stand for the truth regardless of the consequences.

1. Myers, Enemies Without Guns, 76.
2. Palmer, God’s Underground in Asia, 147.