1952 - Vincent Shi, Albert Wei, & Father You

August 1951 – February 1952

Chengdu, Sichuan

After a terrible slaughter of the Trappist monks in North China in 1947-48, during which 33 died, Trappists in other parts of China were targeted by the merciless Communists. Vincent Shi[1] had escaped the slaughter at Yangjiaping, and after spending some time in Beijing he went to Chengdu in Sichuan Province to try to establish a mission there.

When the Communist army swept through Sichuan on their drive south in 1949, Dom Paulinus led a group of 17 Sichuan monks to the safety of British-controlled Hong Kong, where they established a monastery on Lantau Island. Twelve monks remained behind in Sichuan under the leadership of Vincent Shi. On Christmas Day, 1949, the Communists occupied the land around the Chengdu monastery. After

“beating a couple of the young monks severely in a hope of getting them to disclose a non-existent cache of weapons, they took most of the monks’ stores and left them in great need. The monks gave thought of dispersing but the travel restrictions imposed by the new rulers made this difficult. And, in truth, the monks had nowhere to go. They continued their life as best they could.”[2]

On a gloomy morning of February 28, 1951, a band of soldiers suddenly arrived at the monastery. The facility was plundered and sealed, and all the monks were marched off to the Peoples’ Court. Four priests and some of the brothers were sentenced to prison, convicted of “dispensing poisonous medicine and of directing the Legion of Mary.”[3] Two of the priests, Vincent Shi and Albert Wei were

“repeatedly brought before the court and told to apostatize. Their constant refusal brought cruel beatings. They were frequently kicked in the head and body and tortured in other ways. Finally on the night of August 7th, Father Vincent, though not yet 50, succumbed to the torture…. A non-Christian who had been in prison with Shi and witnessed his sufferings told the monks: ‘I never heard any murmur from his lips. When the Reds urged him to deny God, he only answered, ‘I cannot.’”[4]

For months no details were forthcoming about how Shi’s death had come about. News later emerged that Vincent Shi had been “hung for six days straight by his wrists.”[5] When the prison authorities turned his body over for burial the priests found,

“As they removed the filthy, vermin-ridden clothes, that another name would be added to the roll of martyrs. The emaciated body, the stench of purification, the ulcerated sores, and the welts on breast and back proved beyond a doubt that Father Shi had died of neglect and violence.”[6]

The other Trappist monk, Albert Wei, continued to be mercilessly tortured in prison at Chengdu. When it became obvious that he too would not survive, the Communists released him from prison. His Trappist brothers “were able to bring him home, though he was more dead than alive. Lovingly they watched by him through the few days he survived and closed his eyes on November 27th.”[7]

The third member of the Chengdu Trappists to die a martyr was Father You, who was arrested in March 1951. During a horrifying 11-month imprisonment, he was

“tortured several times, and had been suspended for six consecutive days and nights by his wrists, which were bound tightly behind his back. His food was placed in front of him in a bowl, and he had to lap it up like an animal. He was finally released, on the point of death, in February 1952.”[8]

1. Some accounts give his name as Vincent Zhe.
2. “China’s Hope: The Story of the Chinese Cistercian Martyrs 1942-1949.”
3. Myers, Enemies Without Guns, 121.
4. “China’s Hope: The Story of the Chinese Cistercian Martyrs 1942-1949.”
5. Royal, The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century, 334.
6. Cited in Myers, Enemies Without Guns, 121.
7. Cited in Myers, Enemies Without Guns, 121.
8. Monsterleet, Martyrs in China, 230.