THE REMNANT
10
The blood of the martyrs
is the seed of the Church.
–Tertullian, from the “Apologeticus”
The End
F
ather Chrysostomus Chang plumbed
the depths of his human will for a
supernatural strength. With only a
few minutes remaining of his life in the
material world, he lifted his thoughts to the
spiritual. Through screams from the mob,
he addressed his confreres at his side one
last time, to prepare them not for death,
but for life everlasting: “We’re going to die
for God. Let us lift our hearts one more
time, in offering our total beings.”
Helpless, the six Trappist monks stood
handcuffed and chained on a makeshift
platform, targets of a throng of frenzied
hatred that surged toward them. The blood-
encrusted, lice-infested men, wearing rags
caked in their own filth, had nowhere to
run, no one to help them. After six months
of mind-bending interrogations and body-
rending torture, it was over. It was all over.
The verdict had just been read by a
Chinese Communist officer: Death! to be
carried out immediately.
Hundreds of crazed peasants, with fists
raised, with contorted faces, with spit on
their lips, screamed rehearsed slogans of
approval at the approaching slaughter.
Executioners – reliable Party henchmen –
readied their rifles to exterminate the
Roman Catholic monks, believers in the
superstitious cult, lovers of the God on the
Cross imported from the Imperialist West.
And so it happened on January 28,
1948, in the dead of winter in Pan Pu Tsun,
an unmapped village, a frigid heathen hell
in the Mongolian mountains, somewhere
in the frozen north of the Republic of China.
Just over the ridge from the
pandemonium staged by the soulless
Chinese Communists – believers in the
materialistic cult, lovers of the god of death
and destruction – lay the charred ruins of
Our Lady of Consolation, the once-majestic
abbey the monks had called home.
Jostled in the madness, the monks fell
to their knees. With their swollen hands
tied and chained behind their backs, they
couldn’t even cross themselves – In the
name of the Father and of the Son and
of the Holy Ghost – a final time.
The death squad – Communist soldiers
at the ready – loaded their rifles with fresh
rounds of ammo. Shots rang out. One, then
the next, followed by the next, the monks
collapsed upon the blood-splattered, frozen
ground. Their lifeless bodies were dragged
to a nearby sewage ditch and dumped into
a heap, one on top of the other. Alerted by
the shots, wild dogs, roaming the village’s
dirt roads, scavenging for scraps, scurried
over to the bodies to investigate. Sniffing,
they lapped up the warm blood, steaming
in the icy air.
It was all over. Our Lady of
Consolation was no more.
They Died in China
The Forgotten War on Catholic Priests
Theresa Moreau
REMNANT COLUMNIST, California
Don Bosco suggested that the
Chinese abbey be christened
Our Lady of Consolation.
The Beginning
The saga of Our Lady of Consolation
began 64 years earlier on June 16, 1883.
On that glorious day, as the hot summer
wind from the Gobi Desert carried its
golden dust eastward, and the cicada
nymphs emerged reborn, buzzing in
celebration of their emergence into new
life from their old shell of death, Father
Ephrem Seignol, a Trappist monk, stood
on a ledge, in the shadow of West Soul
Mountain. Atop a ridge nearly 10,000 feet
high, that much closer to God, he glimpsed
for the first time the valley of Yang Kia
Ping (translation: Yang Family Land).
Before his eyes, lay the birthplace of the
Trappist Community in China.
With him, Father Ephrem had brought
little else except his dreams, his duties of
state, God’s will and the name of the future
abbey. Before he had departed for China
from his priory in Tamie, France, from the
West for the East, from the Occident for
the Orient, he visited his close friend Father
John Bosco, in Turin, Italy. The future saint
suggested that the abbey be christened with
the same name as the chapel in which they
were sitting: Our Lady of Consolation. And
so it would be.
The Trappists had answered a call from
Roman Catholics in the village of Fan Shan.
Desperate for Mass and the sacraments
on a regular basis, the Chinese natives had
enticed the monks with an offer to sell to
the religious order an immense valley of
rocky, untilled, virgin land in Chahar
province (now Inner Mongolia Autonomous
Region and Hebei province).
Yang Kia Ping, approximately 60
square miles in size, about 75 miles – as
the Mongolian ring-necked pheasant flies
– northwest of Peking (old form of Beijing),
the northern capital of what was at that
time Imperial China, where Empress
Dowager Cixi ruled from the Inner Palace
of the Forbidden City. Travel to the site of
the future abbey was measured in days,
not hours.
Back in 1883, when Father Ephrem
arrived in the valley, the Imperial Peking-
Kalgan Railway didn’t exist. Construction
wouldn’t even begin until 1905. The fastest
mode of travel consisted of jostling along
atop a mule, along narrow dirt ways
through the fields and plains. To reach the
stony plateau in the Taihang Mountains in
Huailai County, a traveler had to be on alert
through the heavily wooded areas, on the
lookout for bandits and bears. Along the
death-defying paths, one had to rely on
trustworthy mules that tested the rock-
strewn trails with their hooves before
putting weight down, hugging close to
towers of sheer rock reaching skyward to
avoid falling straight down the ravine on
the other side.
To form a Trappist religious
Community from a valley of rocks seemed
intimidating, but not impossible. With
religious recruits from Europe and the local
villages, despite a slow start, eventually,
on those rocks, they built their church, Our
Lady of Consolation, an impressive replica
of the architectural beauty at Mount St.
Bernard Abbey.
Pilgrims arriving for the first time and
looking down upon the abbey from any
ridge high in the surrounding mountains,
saw a Community so large inside its
enclosure, it appeared like any village in
the hills. The church was encircled by
several single-story buildings and three
courtyards. A vegetable garden sprouted
up in the middle of the valley, along with
its blossoming fruit trees and, of course, a
luscious vineyard, where Brother Ireneus
Wang, the self-taught viticulturist, tenderly
coaxed the grapes, harvested for the Mass
wine.
From the Chinese countryside, and
even from the highly cultured, international
port city of Shanghai, many boys and men
had felt the call to the austere Trappist way
of life, with its silence and solitude, prayer
and penance. The abbey had been blessed
with vocations: oblates, postulants and
novices. So many joined the Community,
in fact, that Pope Pius XI, in his 1926
encyclical “Rerum Ecclesiae,” lauded the
monks for their exceptional work in the
The Abbey of Our Lady of Consolation in China was so successful
that Pius XI praised it in his 1926 encyclical “Rerum Ecclesiae”
September 15, 2010
missions and of winning vocations by
bringing pagans to the Church. Two years
later, on April 29, 1928, the abbey opened
a daughter house, Our Lady of Joy, with
95 Community members, about 3 miles
from Tchengtingfu, in the province of Hopei
(old form of Hebei).
By the time Christmas 1936 rolled
around, Our Lady of Consolation was at
its height, with the Community numbering
around 120 monks, mostly Chinese natives,
who had attended Mass in the abbey’s
chapel built for the faithful from the
surrounding villages.
Even though majestic, the abbey
reflected the austere nature of any cloister
of Trappists, the common name for the
Order of Cistercians of the Strict
Observance, an offshoot of the Order of
St. Benedictine. The new order, established
in 1664 at the Abbey of La Trappe, aimed
to follow more closely the literal translation
of “The Rule of St. Benedict” and focused
on the penitential aspect of monasticism:
little food, no meat, hard manual labor and
strict silence.
Life inside the abbey’s walls was
peaceful even if life outside was anything
but. The Republican Revolution of 1911
ended the centuries-long dynastic rule and
made way for the Chinese Nationalist
Party (Kuomintang), which became
China’s official government, formed by a
number of Republican cliques that had
ousted the traditional rulers. Then the
Communists in Moscow, the Red capital
of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,
sent some of its cogs in the Communist
International machine to Shanghai, where
the Comintern successfully established the
Communist Party in 1921.
Communists successfully infiltrated the
Nationalist political organization by
clandestine means. But in 1927, the
Nationalists – headed by Generalissimo
Kai-Shek Chiang – uncovered and ousted
its Red contingent, because of its
incitement and sadistic fondness of mob
violence – especially at the encouragement
of its ringleader Tse-Tung Mao. That
ejection in 1927 ignited the highly volatile,
Continued Next Page

September 15, 2010
Rev. Fr. Dom Ephrem Seignol, first Superior and
Founder of Our Lady of Consolation, Yang Kia Ping.
on-again-off-again Chinese Civil War between the
Nationalists and Communists, between Chiang and Mao,
which ravaged China for more than two decades.
Also a factor was the Empire of Japan, which saw
the fractures in China’s infrastructure as an opportunity
to make land grabs. In an attempt to establish their own
political and economic domination, in 1931, the Japanese
invaded Manchuria, a region in northeast China, where
they wanted to get their hands on China’s natural resources
of coal, iron, gold and giant forests. Six years later, on
July 7, 1937 (referred to as 7-7-7), the Second Chinese-
Japanese War began when the Imperial Japanese Army
marched victoriously into Peking, then into Shanghai and
on and on throughout China.
As the Japanese advanced, the Nationalists withdrew
from Peking and northern China. The Japanese could not
fill all the holes left by the Nationalists in their retreat, and
the areas left vacant and vulnerable were taken over by
the Communists – the party opposing the Nationalists.
In October 1937, only a few months after the outbreak
of the Second Chinese-Japanese War, the Communists
reached Huailai County and the valley of Yang Kia Ping.
Our Lady of Consolation found itself between the two
forces: Japanese soldiers to the north and the east;
Chinese Communist soldiers to the south and the west.
A peace existed, but only tentatively. The Japanese
had not been hostile to the abbey; to the contrary, they
had been respectful, out of reverence for the spiritual
nature of the Community.
So, too, the Communists treated the monks with
respect, face to face, but they were not sincere. Avowed
atheists, Communists consider religion to be one of the
evils of the traditional, feudal, “old” world – a declared
enemy in Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto,” published
in 1848. Also, because the abbey had been established by
Europeans, the monks were considered Western invaders,
imperialistic enemies of the Chinese Marxists, who
disregarded the fact that Marxism was yet another
European import.
For two years, the Reds, experts at gathering and
using information as power, continued their faux friendship
with the monks, as they secretly gathered intelligence from
the Community.
On October 15, 1939, around noon, the oblates – the
youngest members of the abbey’s Community – headed
outside the enclosure for their usual Sunday walk in the
mountains, where they liked to climb sections of the Great
Wall. When they reached Gate No. 1, at the third enclosure
wall, the young monks-in-training found hundreds of
Communist soldiers blocking their exit. Not permitted to
leave, the youths notified the porter, who notified more
monks, who notified the superior.
THE REMNANT
It was an official visit, the Reds claimed, as per the
orders of Long Ho and Te Chu, the commanders-in-chief
of their army. The Communists demanded the monks hand
over what they had hidden in their arsenal. When the
monks responded that they didn’t have any weapons
secretly stashed, the Communists refused to accept that
answer.
They grabbed Father Antonius Fan, the prior, and
dragged him out to the orchard, where they drew a rope
over his chest and under his arms tied behind his back,
then strung him up on a tree. For three hours, he dangled,
with his toes just a breath away from touching the ground,
until he was cut lose.
Completely under the Red thumbs of the Communists,
the monks secretly made plans to get out.
On April 4, 1940, the exodus began. In the first group,
five oblates sneaked by the cadres and made their way
over the mountains to the abbey’s daughter house, Our
Lady of Joy, in Hopei province, about 190 miles southwest
of Peking. In the following months, by dribs and drabs, 25
more members of the Community – including novices,
simple professed and young priests – successfully reached
the house of refuge. In a final disappearing act, 12 oblates
walked all the way to the Marist Brothers residence a
few miles outside the walls of Peking.
When the cadres noticed the dwindling numbers in
the Community, the Party goons decided they had to do
something. But for six months, the abbey had no trouble
from them. So thinking the Reds had changed their ways,
it was decided that those members of the Community
who had been sent away would be called back home.
Around March 1941, by the time most of the young
men had been recalled to the abbey, the Communists pulled
back their masks and placed the whole Community under
house arrest. Under constant surveillance, every move
was watched. Nothing could be done by the monks
without permission of the Communists. No one went in;
no one went out unless authorized.
At the time, politically, strategically, the Communists
were busy building up their military strength and setting
up their own administrative system in northern China,
including the areas around the abbey. For, during World
War II, the Communists had tricked the Nationalists into
a civil-war truce, feigning the two could join forces to
fight the Japanese. However, the Reds had no intentions
of keeping the truce, but used it as an opportunity to make
sure the Nationalists were worn down by the war against
the Japanese.
With the end of World War II, on August 15, 1945,
the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
Japanese forces retreated from their positions around the
world, thus withdrawing from China. The end of the war
also ended the so-called truce between Mao’s Communists
and Chiang’s Nationalists. The all-out civil war between
the two ensued in a brutal fight, with Mao chomping down
on Chiang, eventually hounding him all the way to Formosa
(old Portuguese name of Taiwan).
But the Nationalists weren’t the only targets during
the civil war. The Communists also started targeting other
enemies: counterrevolutionaries, religious believers and
landlords. The Trappists were all three.
The Communists wanted to destroy the abbey and its
Community. But to legitimize their destruction of the abbey,
they needed to produce evidence that the monks
committed some sort of crime.
In August 1945, during the hottest days of the summer,
the Communists began turning up the heat even more.
For health reasons, supposedly, a Communist general, a
commissioner of the People, and his assistant stopped off
at the abbey for a bit of a rest. It was not all that unusual
for travelers to lodge for short periods in Yang Kia Ping,
what all the locals called Our Lady of Consolation.
However, ever wary of the Communists, the abbot, Father
Alexis Baillon, assigned Brother Adrianus Wang, the sub-
guest master, to keep an eye on the two guests during
their stay, which coincided with a burial inside the
enclosure.
The general’s assistant attended the funeral and, later,
expressed his admiration to Brother Adrianus for the
solemnity and beauty of the ceremony: “The funeral was
11
so beautiful. At home, we are buried like dogs,” the
assistant said, adding, “The general treats me like a dog.
If I could, I would try to kill him.”
“Don’t do it here,” Brother Adrianus said.
Weeks later, Communist soldiers arrived at the abbey
and arrested Brother Adrianus, claiming that the officer’s
assistant had revealed under torture that the monk had
suggested the general be assassinated. The Brother’s
room was searched, and soldiers found a notebook with
the following entry, a quote from the abbot, Father Alexis:
“Pray God to destroy the Communists.”
Soldiers arrested the abbot, Father Alexis, and Father
Maurus Bougon, who had been the guest master during
the general’s stay.
On October 25, 1945, all arrested were hauled off to
Huang An, a village about 20 miles from the abbey, where
they were imprisoned in a small room without furniture,
without heat. Father Alexis and Father Maurus had their
feet shackled to the floor with irons all winter long, until
March, when the abbey received a notice: Send the mules
to fetch the abbot and the other prisoners. On March 17,
1946, all were returned to the abbey and set free except
the abbot, Father Alexis, who was ordered to leave China.
Right before departing China for his homeland of
France, Father Alexis made an announcement on
December 1, 1946, in the Chapter Room, where the monks
met daily for the reading of a chapter from “The Rule of
St. Benedict.” He informed the Community that in the
absence of a father abbot, Father Michaelus Hsu was to
be the superior of the Community.
Intelligent and highly cultured, Father Michaelus had
been born in the Tsing-Pu district of Shanghai on March
18, 1901, into a family with an aristocratic background.
He was a direct descendant (12th generation) of Prime
Minister Kuang-Chi “Paul” Hsu – a member of Empress
Dowager Cixi’s Imperial Court, guardian and tutor of the
sons of the Imperial House and chancellor of the National
Institute. After his death in 1633, the prime minister was
buried with great honors. But, perhaps, most importantly,
he had been converted to the Faith by Father Matteo Ricci
(Society of Jesus), an Italian and one of the founding
fathers of the Jesuit mission in China.
As for Father Maurus, upon his return from
imprisonment, his religious superiors in Europe gave him
an ultimatum: Return to France, or minister to a parish in
China. He chose to remain in China and was appointed a
parish priest in Peimong, south of Peking. As the abbey
restructured its hierarchy, the local Communists continued
to set up and strategize for the upcoming “struggle” against
the monks.
In the “Communist Manifesto,” Karl Marx wrote,
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history
of class struggles.” Marx’s philosophy of the “struggle,”
later coined dialectical materialism, can be understood in
a formula: Thesis plus antithesis equals synthesis. To make
Continued Next Page
Father Michaelus Hsu was made superior of the
Community after Father Abbot was banished from China

12
They Died in China
T. Moreau/Continued from Page 11
it even simpler and to apply it to the
Chinese Communist agenda: Minor
enemies pitted against major enemy equals
new minor enemies pitted against a new
major enemy.
The struggle was a form of elimination
that – when enacted by Mao and his
henchmen – eliminated political enemies,
minor and major. To prepare for the proper
political struggle nationally, Communists
began establishing neighborhood
associations in China’s cities and peasant
associations in the villages. The
associations held mandatory political
meetings, brainwashing sessions organized
to push the Party’s particular struggle
against whomever the current political
enemy was.
At times, when a particular enemy
was to be targeted and “struggled” against,
the enemy could be attacked at either a
small session (attended by members of a
single association) or at a large rally
(attended by members of several
neighboring associations). Attendance by
members was always mandatory. At a
large struggle rally, the targets were usually
placed on a raised platform before
hundreds and hundreds of members who
screamed rehearsed slogans as cadres
walked through the crowds, agitating and
inciting rage. Violence – often sadistic and
fatal – was encouraged and regarded as
legitimate acts of revenge by the oppressed
People against their oppressors.
The Trappists of Our Lady of
Consolation were considered oppressors.
They were also considered major enemies.
In the province of Chahar, there was one
Communist official who wanted the abbey
destroyed and its members “liquidated.” A
bitter fanatic, he searched for someone
with a like mind, and eventually he found
the perfect Party man for the job and
appointed him to take care of the
extermination. That man was an ambitious
man who hated everything having to do
with God and loved everything having to
do with the Communist Party. He was also
an intelligent man who had attended a
university in Peking where he passed his
law exams. That man, like Mao, was from
a family of landowners (considered
oppressors, enemies of the People), and
also like Mao, he renounced his family.
That man was Tui-Shih Li.
The struggle against the abbey began
in April 1947. At the peasant association
meetings in the villages surrounding the
Trappist Community, the Communists
began agitating the peasants, turning them
against the monks. The cadres told the
peasants that all the land the monks
possessed actually belonged to the People;
that the monks were trying to be lords over
the peasants; that the monks were the
oppressors and that the peasants were the
oppressed People. For two months, this
continued until, finally, they struck the
abbey.
On July 1, 1947, two monks were
tending some livestock on the abbey’s
property in Hsing Chuang, about 1 mile
north of the enclosure wall, when they were
THE REMNANT
confronted and hauled before a People’s
Court. A staged mass struggle meeting was
orchestrated by the Communists. Charged
and declared guilty of oppressing the
People, the lay brothers were ordered to
hand over some of the abbey’s goats and
cows to the People.
The next day, July 2, 1947, two
messengers arrived at the abbey and
ordered Father Seraphinus Hsih and Father
Chrysostomus Chang to stand trial before
a People’s Court. Under guard, the monks
were marched about 1.5 miles south of the
abbey, down to a dry riverbed in the village
of Li Chia Wan Tze. Forced onto a
platform, the two stood before a gathering
of peasants, assembled from many
villages in the surrounding areas.
Accused of alleged offenses that had
occurred almost 50 years before, the two
had to answer to certain charges: That
during the time of the Boxer Rebellion in
1900, for example, foreign troops had
oppressed the People of north China and
that Our Lady of Consolation had been built
with indemnities exacted from the Chinese
government by the foreign powers.
A Remnant Catechetical Series…
Grounds of Catholic Doctrine
A Profession of the Catholic Faith
I
, N.N., with a firm faith, believe and
profess all and every one of those things
which are contained in the Creed which
the holy Roman Church maketh use of.
To wit: I believe in one God, the Father
Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of
all things visible and invisible – and in one
Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son
of God, and born of the Father before all
ages; God of God; Light of Light; true God
of true God; begotten, not made;
consubstantial to the Father, by whom all
things were made; who, for us men, and
for our salvation, came down from heaven,
and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of
the Virgin Mary, and was made man; was
crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate;
He suffered and was buried, and the third
day he rose again, according to the
Scriptures; he ascended into heaven; sits
at the right hand of the Father, and is to
come again with glory to judge the living
and the dead, of whose kingdom there shall
be no end. And (I believe) in One, Holy,
Catholic, and Apostolic Church; I confess
one baptism for the remission of sins; and
I look for the resurrection of the dead, and
the life of the world to come.
I most steadfastly admit and embrace
apostolical and ecclesiastical traditions, and
all other observances and constitutions of
the same Church.
I also admit the Holy Scripture
according to that sense which our holy
Mother the Church has held, and does hold,
to which it belongs to judge of the true
sense and interpretation of the Scriptures;
Enemies of the People: Martyred Trappist Monks of Our Lady of Consolation
“These monks are guilty,” shouted
cadres. “Do you agree or disagree?”
“We agree!” the peasants shouted
back.
“The will of the People must be
fulfilled. For this, the abbey must give
property to the People,” the judge ruled.
“Are you with us or not?”
“With you!” screamed the peasants,
the same peasants who had sought refuge
by Pope Pius IV
neither will I ever take and interpret them
otherwise than according to the unanimous
consent of the Fathers.
I also profess that there are truly and
properly seven Sacraments of the new law,
instituted by Jesus Christ, our Lord, and
necessary for the salvation of mankind,
though not all for everyone; to wit, Baptism,
Confirmation, Eucharist, Penance, Extreme
Unction, Orders and Matrimony, and that
they confer grace; and that of these,
Baptism, Confirmation and Orders cannot
be reiterated without sacrilege. And I also
receive and admit the received and
approved ceremonies of the Catholic
Church, used in the solemn administration
of all the aforesaid sacraments.
I embrace and receive all and every
one of the things which have been defined
and declared in the holy Council of Trent,
concerning original sin and justification.
I profess, likewise, that in the Mass
there is offered to God a true, proper and
propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the
dead. And that in the most holy sacrament
of the Eucharist there are truly, really, and
substantially, the Body and Blood, together
with the Soul and Divinity of our Lord Jesus
Christ; and that there is made a conversion
of the whole substance of the bread into
the Body, and of the whole substance of
the wine into the Blood, which conversion
the Catholic Church calls
Transubstantiation. I also confess that
under either kind alone Christ is received
whole and entire, and a true sacrament. I
constantly hold that there is a Purgatory
September 15, 2010
in the abbey in times of danger, had sought
food in the abbey in times of famine, had
sought relief in the abbey in times of stress.
The very same peasants who had bestowed
the abbey with several memorial tablets
as gifts of appreciation for the years of
selfless aid.
(To Be Continued Next Issue)
Martyred in China
and that the souls therein detained are
helped by the suffrages of the faithful
Likewise, that the saints reigning
together with Christ are to be honored and
invocated, and that they offer prayers to
God for us, and that their relics are to be
held in veneration.
I most firmly assert that the images of
Christ, of the Mother of God, ever virgin,
and also of other saints, may be had and
retained, and that due honor and veneration
are to be given them.
I also affirm that the power of
indulgences was left by Christ in the
Church, and that the use of them is most
wholesome to Christian people.
I acknowledge the Holy, Catholic,
Apostolic, Roman Church for the mother
and mistress of all churches; and I promise
true obedience to the bishop of Rome,
successor to St. Peter, prince of the
Apostles and vicar of Jesus Christ.
I likewise undoubtedly receive and
profess all other things delivered, defined,
and declared by the sacred canons and
general councils and particularly by the holy
Council of Trent; and I condemn, reject
and anathematize all things contrary
thereto, and all heresies which the Church
has condemned, rejected and
anathematized.
I, N.N., do at this present freely
profess and sincerely hold this true Catholic
faith, without which no one can be saved;
and I promise most constantly to retain and
confess the same entire and inviolate, with
God’s assistance, to the end of my life.
(To Be Continued Next Issue)