Bishop Joseph Fan Zhongliang, S.J. Bishop Of The Chinese

Bishop Joseph Fan Zhongliang, S.J.

Bishop Joseph Fan Zhongliang, of Shanghai, a leader of China’s underground Catholic community, died March 15. He was 96. He refused to recognize the Chinese government-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association. So, he served in prison with other priests, who were arrested in 1955, during a government crackdown. From 1958 to 1978, Fan was imprisoned in Qinghai Province. There, his work included carrying corpses to the cemetery, reports Ucanews. China claims it has 23 million Christians, 11 million of them Catholics. “The real number is somewhere between 60 to 130 million”, the Economist estimates. Shanghai refused permission that the funeral mass be held at St Ignatius Cathedral. Instead, it limited rites for Bishop Fan to an open courtyard at the funeral home. 

Chinese Catholics are divided between two communities. One group refuses to “render to Ceasar the things that are God’s”’ and therefore, driven underground. The Vatican accepts the other, with some compromises, to continue its existence. Both stand with the pope. Both face persecution from Chinese authorities, as have other Christian denominations.  

“The more persecution, the more the church grows,” said Protestant Pastor Samuel Lamb in 1993. He died in 2013, age 88.  His 20 years of jail and forced labor followed an earlier two-year sentence. Some 30,000 people attended his memorial service. Police constantly pressured Lamb to comply with official doctrine and register with the government. He always refused, as did Joseph Fan. “China strictly regulates the religious activities of Uighur Muslims,” the latest US State Department report on religious freedom notes. “…It harassed or detained Catholic clergy not affiliated with the government Catholic Patriotic Association... Some 83 Tibetan monks, nuns, and laypersons increasingly sought to express despair and dissent by selfimmolating in 2012.” Fan was baptized a Catholic in 1932, joined the Society of Jesus in 1938. He was named Shanghai bishop by John Paul II in 2000. But the Communist Party refused to recognize him. Ceasar rendered to itself what belonged to God. Security police arrested Fan repeatedly and ransacked his flat. In 1992, the accounts of the entire Shanghai underground church were closed down. His intended successor was Thaddeus Ma Daqin, but he too was taken into custody in 2012 after he quit the government association.

Link (here)

China’s Most Famous—And Most Powerful—Catholic Bishop Has Died.

China’s most famous—and most powerful—Catholic bishop has died. When I last saw him in 2011, I knew “Old beloved friends.” He had not seen those faces in more than six long and eventful decades. 

He asked me to bring more photographs of “Catholic Shanghai before the Communists”; I do have more images to give him, but now he is perhaps seeing the real faces of his “beloved friends,” and I will file them away for posterity. Bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian, SJ (1916-2013), was one of the most gentle and charming people I have met, and he was also among the most enigmatic, and as I thumb through his dossier I vacillate between admiration, disagreement, speculation, and sometimes disappointment.

As I said in my 2010 interview with Bishop Jin for Ignatius Insight, with Jin there are “no easy answers.” I would like to offer a few remarks here about why Bishop Jin’s recent death, at the age of 97, is probably one of the most noteworthy events in the history of Catholicism in China.

then that age was finally catching up with Shanghai’s remarkable and indefatigable prelate. As we sat together, I handed him a pile of rare photographs of him and his fellow Jesuits, images that dated before his arrest in 1955. Pausing for some time as he looked over the first photograph, he said in a low voice,

Link (here) to Anthony E Clarke Ph.D.'s full bio-piece at Catholic World Report

Bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian Became A Jesuit In 1938

Bishop Jin Luxian and his chosen successor, Joseph Xing Wenzhi

Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin, who was to succeed Bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian, astonished and enraged officials by publicly declaring he was leaving the state-run church. The issue has not been resolved, with Bishop Ma reportedly stripped of his title and his movements curtailed. Catholics in China say the pressure from the state-run church can be unbearable, and priests, especially younger ones and those who “look to Rome,” may prefer to remain at a lower level in the hierarchy. Bishop Jin’s life was marked by extraordinary political conflict. Born in 1916, he was a patriot: in “The Memoirs of Jin Luxian, Volume One: Learning and Relearning 1916-1982,” a translation of which was published late last year in English, he wrote: “I was born at a time when the people of our country were suffering from the chaos of civil disorder and foreign occupation, so during my youth there was no National Day and only national disgrace.”

Bishop Jin had both “the unalterably Catholic faith and the unassailable confidence of a Chinese patriot,” wrote Father Michael Kelly, a fellow Jesuit who is executive director of the Union of Catholic Asian News.

In 1985 he was appointed a bishop by the state-run church, and in 2004 he was recognized by the Vatican, bringing full circle a life that included studies in Rome in the 1940s. Bishop Jin, who was orphaned by the age of 14, attended Jesuit high school in Shanghai and became a Jesuit in 1938, aged about 22. He obtained a doctorate in theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, returning to China not long after Mao Zedong took power in 1949, Union of Catholic Asian News reported. 

He was a “come-back kid,” it reported, whose reputation and influence led to his being dubbed the “Yellow Pope,” the title of a 2006 biography by a French journalist, Dorian Malovic. ignificantly, by cooperating with the authorities, he persuaded them eventually — by a circuitous route — to allow prayers for the pope to be said during Mass and helped to develop the liturgy in Chinese, Union of Catholic Asian News wrote. 

Writing in Ignatius Insight in 2010, the historian Anthony E. Clark described Bishop Jin as “China’s most powerful aboveground bishop” (in contrast to the “underground” church that follows the Vatican). “He is one of the Church’s most enigmatic men, and one often wonders if what he is saying is a direct truth or a circuitous statement, a result of his years of dealing with Communist officials who hold an ever-tighter grasp on his movements as China’s most public prelate,” Dr. Clark wrote. 

Link (here) to the New York Times

Aloysius Jin Luxian SJ, Bishop Of Shanghai

He’s had more comebacks the Deng Xiao Ping. Deng famously was deposed twice only to bounce back a third time and reshape modern China. Aloysius Jin Luxian SJ, bishop of Shanghai, has been knocked about and pushed over by life, the Catholic Church in China and at the Vatican, by the Jesuits and the Communist Party on so many occasions you could expect him to be punch drunk by now. As recently as last year, his patiently prepared succession plan for leadership of the Shanghai diocese came to an abrupt halt in a single speech. His successor, Bishop Ma Daqin, earned the hostility of the Communist Party and removal from office in a single short speech shortly after his episcopal ordination. So with Ma sidelined and Aloysius Jin’s succession plans thwarted, it was back to the drawing board in Shanghai. But reversals, challenges, conflicts, misunderstandings and opposition are the staples of Jin’s long life, the outline of which is contained in his memoirs published in Chinese in 2008 with the English translation becoming available in late 2012. The worst thing he says about anyone in his memoirs is that they are or were naïve. And he says it of himself frequently enough through the account of his own life as it takes its, at times, tortured path. But what is endearing about his account is the way the almost fresh-faced innocence of the young man still survives in the 90-something’s record of how his long life – including 27 years in various forms of imprisonment – has unfolded. Surprise, wonderment and gratitude flow with the pages.

Link (here) to  UCANEWS

The Jesuit Priest Who Converted And Became A Taoist Priest

Michael Saso

The seven alchemical formulas are already stripped down to core practices. I don't think you need to invoke, as does the Mao Shan sect, the "lu" or name registers of hundreds of deities, or use special mantras and talismans to command them. 

You can learn that; it’s a lineage method. Michael Saso, the Jesuit priest who converted and became a Taoist priest, learned it and told me it works powerfully. But he told me there are only a handful of people left who know it. It is complicated for Westerners; you probably need to learn Chinese. I personally decided my time was better spent practicing nei gong than learning spoken Chinese.

My alchemical tradition works with the polarities of qi in nature and with the natural shen, which manage the natural flow of qi. You can directly tap the energy of the sun, the moon and the stars, volcanoes, water, wind and rain. All of these are natural forces and they are all represented microcosmically within your body. You can resonate those outer forces into your body and do all this work right inside your body without invoking any particular deities other than the natural shen, the spirits that are living inside you and which are connected to the natural spirits that run the body of this universe. Spirits don’t occupy any physical space. That’s why it is possible to unite an entire universe of spirits "inside" the microcosm of your body. I have no problem with people having connections to religious deities or special guides or anything. Those often appear and people maintain whatever alliances they want to. The principle is what counts, and the efficacy of one’s method. How do you work the different levels of polarity—of water and fire, yin and yang? How do you grasp the essence and open the mysterious gate, the "hidden period" or timeless state, and enter into it? 

Link (here) 

Bento de Góis, S.J. "Seeking Cathay He Found Heaven,"

Bento de Góis, S.J.

When the leaders of the Mission at the Court of Akbar heard from Musulman travellers of a great and rich empire called Khitai, to be reached by a long and devious course through the heart of Inner Asia, the idea seized their imaginations that here was an ample and yet untouched field awaiting the labours of the Society, if the way could but be found open; and this way they determined to explore. The person selected for this venturesome exploration was Bento de Góis. Before he started on his journey doubts had been suggested whether this Cathay were not indeed the very China in which Ricci and his companions were already labouring with some promise of success; but these doubts were overruled, or at least the leader of the Agra Mission was not convinced by them, and he prevailed on his superiors still to sanction the exploration that had been proposed. 

The gallant soldier of the Society, one not unworthy to bear the Name on which others of that Company's deeds and modes of action have brought such obloquy, carried through his arduous task; ascertained that the mysterious empire he had sought through rare hardships and perils was China indeed; and died just within its borders. "Seeking Cathay he found heaven," as one of his brethren has pronounced his epitaph. 

And thus it is that we have thought his journey a fitting close to this collection; for with its termination Cathay may be considered finally to disappear from view, leaving China only in the mouths and minds of men. Not but that Cathay will be found for some time longer to retain its place as a distinct region in some maps

Link (here) to read this and more

A French Jesuit In The Middle Of The Sino-Japanese War

Baby during the invasion of Shanghai

A hundred thousand Chinese refugees are huddled in the narrow safety zone at Shanghai in charge of a Jesuit priest, Father Jacquinot (Fr. Robert Jacquinot de Besange, S.J.). They are in a dreadful plight, while hoards of hungry, wounded and smoke-blacked refugees clamor at the iron-barred gates for admission, and plead for bread and water.
 Link (here) to read the full article at The Age, published Nov 17th 1937. Link (here) to a book about Fr. Jacquinot entitled, "The Jacquinot Safe Zone"

Polish Jesuit: Fr. Michał Piotr Boym, S.J.

The Jesuit missionaries who operated in China between the late 16th and early 17th century were a an outstanding group, but even against this background the story of Michael (Michał) Boym (ca. 1612–1659) is remarkable. Born in Lwów (a.k.a Lemberg, Lvov, Lviv), he left his native Poland to join the Jesuits, and was posted to China. He happened to arrive to China right around the time of the Manchu invasion and the fall of the Ming Dynasty. Fifty years earlier, the Wanli Emperor never deigned to meet Matteo Ricci and Diego Pantoya in person (and when given the portrait of the priests, exclaimed "Ah, they are Hui-Hui!"). Now, when Beijing and Nanjing both fell to  the Manchus, Koffler (another Jesuit, an Austrian) and Boym were able to enter the inner circle of the court of the Yongli Emperor (a grandson of Wanli), who was still resisting the Manchus from the empire's southwestern corner, and to baptize several members of the royal family. As the Ming's situation became increasingly precarious, Empress Elena sent Boym to Europe with a plea for help from the Pope. The Portuguese (who controlled Jesuit's operations in China and elsewhere in Asia) and the Jesuit leadership, however, were not all that enthusiastic about supporting the Ming's nearly-lost cause, so getting to Europe became yet another adventure for Boym and his traveling companion, a Chinese Christian named Andrew Zheng.

Engaged as he was with politics and the missionary business, Boym managed to write a few important books and articles, only some of which were published at the time. One of the best known is his delightful Flora Sinensis (1656). The album actually covered both flora and fauna, and not only of China. One of the most interesting pictures there was the one showing two creatures: Sum Xu (松鼠) and Lo Meo Quey (绿毛龟).

松鼠 is transcribed songshu in modern Chinese transcription (Hanyu Pinyin), and is the usual Chinese word for "squirrel". (The literal meaning is "pine rat".) ''Sum Xu'' would be the normal way to transcribe this in the Portuguese-influenced transcription that Boym used; elsewhere, for example, he has the Shandong province as Xantum. While Boym's picture of the creature is reasonably squirrel-like, his description of the creature's lifestyle is, however, decidedly non-squirrel-ly. According to Boym, the ''sumxu'' was a pretty yellow-and-black animal, commonly tamed, and made to wear silver a collar. Valued as good hunters of mice, they would sell for 7 to 9 silver coins. Based on this, it has been suggested (e.g., by Hartmut Walravens) that he was actually describing some animal from the mustelid family (including martens, ferrets, weasels, etc.) that may have been domesticated in China.

The Memory Palace

Mira Bartok's disturbing, beautiful book about her mother's schizophrenia takes its title from the teachings of a 16th-century Jesuit priest, Matteo Ricci, 

who helped Chinese scholars safeguard their memories by associating a specific image with each memory, then assigning each image a place in a room in the mind. In this way one could build, room by room, an imaginary palace filled with real memories.

"The Memory Palace" is not so much a palace of memories as a complex web of bewitching verbal and visual images, memories, dreams, true stories and rambling excerpts from the author's mentally ill mother's notebooks. It is an extraordinary mix.

Link (here) to the full book review at the The Washington Post

"Deceive The Eye"

..........space artificially expands thanks to an 18th-century trompe l'oeil mural using a European treatment of perspective introduced by Jesuit missionaries.
Link (here) to the Wall Street Journal

18th Century Jesuit Chinese Bishop Of Nanking

The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Nanjing

........in 1752, Bishop Gottfried Xavier von Laimbeckhoven was appointed bishop, although he had to escape to Macao for his Episcopal consecration three years later. But he continued his active missionary life, traveling all over his diocese. "I was their bishop," he noted, "but I could neither meet, nor lead my flock." His most painful cross was the duty imposed on him to promulgate the Pontifical Brief suppressing the Jesuit Order in 1773. It was to him like "condemning my own mother to death." From his Jesuit Superior in Beijing, he received this note dated May 25, 1775:

"For the last time, I can sign as a Jesuit. The bull of suppression is on its way, and will soon reach you. Yet it is already a tremendous blessing to have been a Jesuit one or two years!" 

All his life, Bishop Laimbeckhoven faithfully observed the Jesuit Rule, which was a source of profound joy and strength for him. The bishop of Macao questioned his faculties, and a Portuguese missionary refused to obey him. Rome considered him too old and sent a vicar to take his place, but the latter died on the way, creating a delicate juridical impasse. Exhausted, Bishop Laimbeckhoven retired to an obscure village, where an ex-Jesuit priest ministered the last sacraments to him.

Link (here) to the full article at Business World written by Fr. José S. Arcilla S.J. 

Link (here) to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Nanjing 

Fr. Jean Joseph Marie Amiot S.J. "A Chinese Missionary"

Born in Toulon, France, Jean Joseph Marie Amiot entered the Jesuit order in 1737 and was ordained in 1746. He reached Peking (Beijing) in August 1751 and was granted an audience with the Qianlong emperor. His research on the peoples and spoken languages of China led to lifelong study of many aspects of Chinese and Manchu culture. He engaged in considerable correspondence with learned people in Europe, including Henri Bertin, minister to Louis XV, who raised many questions about China.

Amiot published voluminous accounts of the history, chronology, physics, literature, mathematics, and music of China, as well as an extensive life of Confucius. When he learned in 1775 that the pope had suppressed the Jesuit order, he suggested to the French government that the Paris Foreign Mission Society take charge of the Peking mission, but the pope sent the Congregation de la Mission (Lazarists, also known as Vincentians), which Amiot welcomed. His last letters to his sister reflect his concern about the French Revolution and its impact on the mission in China. Overwhelmed by news of the regicide of Louis XIV, which he received on the evening of October 8, he died during the night.

Link (here)

Leprosarium

Jesuit Father Tom Neitzke, recently ordained in June, spent a summer two years ago in China working at a leprosarium. The journey to the remote Chinese village to stay among those suffering with leprosy and to understand their subsequent shunning by their community, Fr. Neitzke understood that there is much to learn from those among us who have the least. His reflections on the experience of being in China are (here) at National Jesuit News

Where Missionaries Such As Matteo Ricci And Adam Schall Studied Chinese

Ruins of St. Paul's College in Macau

All that remains of the greatest of Macau's churches is its magnificent stone facade and grand staircase. The church was built in 1602 adjoining the Jesuit College of St. Paul's, the first Western college in the Far East where missionaries such as Matteo Ricci and Adam Schall studied Chinese before serving at the Ming Court in Beijing as astronomers and mathematicians. The church, made of taipa and wood, was brilliantly decorated and furnished, according to early travelers. The facade of carved stone was built in 1620-27 by Japanese Christian exiles and local craftsmen under the direction of Italian Jesuit Carlo Spinola.

After the expulsion of the Jesuits, the college was used as an army barracks and in 1835 a fire started in the kitchens and destroyed the college and the body of the church.

After restoration work, lasting from 1990 to 1995, the back side of the Ruins of St. Paul's was turned into a museum. The ruins are regarded as the symbol of Macau and now offer visitors a new site where they can view the remains of the former Church of the Mother of God, visit a Crypt where the relics of the Martyrs of Japan and Vietnam rest, and a museum of Sacred Art where there are exhibits of paintings, sculptures and liturgical objects from churches and monasteries in the City.

Link (here) to the post with lots pictures.

Tusganwan Orphanage

The recently opened Tushanwan Museum features a contrast that is pure Shanghai: a 1930s advertising poster of a sultry, qipao-clad siren next to an austere painting of Jesus. Both are legacies of the city's Jesuit Tushanwan Orphanage and its attached arts and crafts academy, which helped to introduce Western art into China.

Link (here) to the full article at the Wall Street Journal. 

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So what happened to Tushanwan? In 1953, the 200 remaining orphans – and the orphanage – were taken from the Shanghai Diocese, and brought under the control of  (Communist) Shanghai’s Civil Affairs Bureau . In 1956, as the country’s various industries were nationalized, Tushanwan’s workshops were broken off and given to various state industrial groups. According to Zikawei in History: “The Tushanwan Orphanage finally finished its history in about 1960.”

Photo is of the Tushanwan Orphanage wood shop (here) at Shanghai Scrap

Jesuit Missions And Astronomy In 18th Century China

Fr. Karel Slavíček, S.J.  (here) and (here) (Karl Slavicek, S.J.) or (Carolus Slavicek, S.J.) an astronomer and mathematician from Jimramov (today's Czech Republic), came to Beijing from Lisbon, Portugal as a Jesuit missionary in 1714. "Slavíček was on a mission; not only in the real sense of the word as a religious missionary, but also on a mission of creating a bridge between the cultures of Europe and China," Sečka said in his opening speech. 

In 1722, many Jesuits were expelled to Canton, China, but Slavíček's scientific merit allowed him to stay in Beijing. He defended Chinese astronomy, especially the sixty-year cycle, which is the basis of the Chinese calendar, and said that China was the most educated and civilized nation of his time. 

The exhibit, which shows Slavíček's translated letters and works, will be on display in the second hall of the observatory for the next three months. Veronika Musilová, third secretary of the Embassy of the Czech Republic to China, said that the exhibit took several tedious months to complete. She said she hopes the exhibit will spark interest in others to visit observatories in the Czech Republic and harbor more Czech-Chinese cooperation.

Link (here) to China.org

Jesuit Porcelain And Fr. François-Xavier d'Entrecolles, S.J.

Jesuit Porcelain, a name given to Japanese porcelain of the 18th century, which the Jesuits had caused to be decorated with Madonnas, images of the saints, and Christian emblems. It is now rare.
Link (here)

Photo of Jesuit Porcelain tea cup (here)
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A valuable independent authority is the Jesuit missionary Pere Francois-Xavier d'Entrecolles, who frequently resided at what he calls his Chretiente at Ching-te Chen, and wrote from there two letters upon the porcelain manufacture, dated 1712 and 1722, towards the close of the long reign of the Emperor K'ang-hsi, the culminating period of ceramic art in China. Where these two authorities differ it is usually the worthy missionary who is right; as, for instance, in the question of the colour of the glaze of the old Lungch'iian porcelain, which he states to be green, bordering upon olive, while Julien will have it to be blue.

Link (here)

The Illustrious Jesuit, Father Alexander de Rhodes

Tonquin provided itself with a feeder by establishing the Seminary of Foreign Missions, in France, Japan did not, and, as a consequence, the church of Tonquin flourished while that of Japan died. Finally, forging a weapon wherewith to do battle for his cause, he pays a glowing tribute to the supposed founder of his favorite mission, Alexander de Rhodes, in the following words:

"The illustrious Jesuit, Father Alexander de Rhodes, S.J., was the Josue of the Tonquinese mission. His was a broader mind than most of his contemporaries. Driven from Tonquin (Tonkin, Vietnam), he went to Rome, whence, after advising with the Pope, he journeyed to Paris, there to inaugurate the great Seminary of the Foreign Missions."

Now we must premise that it is only by the courtesy of his sincere and warm-hearted admirer that de Rhodes can be called the Josue of the Tonquinese mission, for, in point of fact, he was not the first to enter it, never inaugurated the Seminary of the Foreign Missions, and never led his warriors, or even went back himself, to that promised land. Nevertheless, he was a noble and heroic soul, and deserves all the praise we can give him. Yet if his letters portray him rightly, he would be hurt to find himself exalted at the expense of his brethren.

Link (here) The American Catholic Quarterly Review, the article is entitled, The Failure of Native Clergy.

Link (here) to a time line of Catholic and Jesuit missionary activity in Vietnam.

Fr. Matteo Ricci's, "The Impossible Black Tulip" Map Fetches $1,000,000.00

A rarely viewed world map compiled in 1602 by Jesuit missionary to China, Matteo Ricci, has gone on display at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

The 400-year-old map identifies Florida as "the Land of Flowers" and put China at the center of the world, according to ABC News.

The map created by Matteo Ricci is claimed to be the first in Chinese to show the Americas. Ricci, a Jesuit missionary from Italy, was the first Westerner to visit what is now Beijing in the late 1500s. Known for introducing Western science to China, Ricci created the map in 1602 at the request of Emperor Wanli.

The map includes pictures and annotations describing different regions of the world. Africa was noted to have the world's highest mountain and longest river. The description of North America is brief with mentions of "humped oxen" or bison, wild horses and a region named "Ka-na-ta."

Ricci gave a brief description of the discovery of the Americas.

"In olden days, nobody had ever known that there were such places as North and South America or Magellanica. But a hundred years ago, Europeans came sailing in their ships to parts of the sea coast, and so discovered them."

This map - one of only two in good condition - was purchased by the James Ford Bell Trust in October for $1 million, making it the second most expensive rare map ever sold.

Link (here)

A New Film Documentary On Fr. Matteo Ricci, S.J.

A new documentary on the life of Fr. Matteo Ricci, a pioneering Jesuit missionary to China, was screened at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday.

The film is part of a revival of interest in Ricci, whom Pope Benedict XVI has called a model for a “fruitful meeting” between civilizations.

The movie, directed by Italian filmmaker Gjon Kolndrekaj, was shot in China and Italy.

Political and religious dignitaries from both countries attended the screening, ANSA reports. They included the Patriarch of Venice Cardinal Angelo Scola, China’s Ambassador to Italy Sun Yuxi and the Chinese Embassy’s cultural counselor Zhang Jianda.

Matteo Ricci was born in 1552 in the Marche town of Macerata. He became a Jesuit priest and a scholar of mathematics and astronomy before leaving for the Far East at the age of 26.

Audience members from Ricci’s hometown of Macerata included Bishop Claudio Giuliodori, Mayor Giorgio Meschini. The Governor of Marche Gian Maria Spacca was also in attendance.

Ricci spent four years in Goa on the west coast of India before traveling to China. There, he settled in Zhao Qing in the southernmost Guangdong Province and began studying Chinese. During his time there he produced his global Great Map of Ten Thousand Countries, which revolutionized the Chinese understanding of the rest of the world.

In 1589 he moved to Zhao Zhou and began sharing European mathematics discoveries with Chinese scholars. He became known as “Li Madou” and was renowned for his extraordinary memory and knowledge of astronomy. He eventually became a member of the court of Ming Emperor Wanli.

In 1601 he was allowed into the Forbidden City of Beijing, where he worked until his death in 1610.

Ricci’s work is familiar to Chinese schoolchildren of all ages but he was not well known in Italy until recently, ANSA says. Two successive exhibitions and a TV film have revived interest in his life.

Governor Spacca said that Father Ricci is one of his region’s “most important sons.”

“The fact this film is being shown on September 10 is also a special coincidence, as this was the very day in 1583 when Ricci left Macao and set out for inland China, the province of Canton,” he continued, according to ANSA.

Pope Benedict XVI recently sent a message to the Bishop of Marcerata which described the Jesuit missionary as a model for a “fruitful meeting” between European and Chinese civilizations.

“Matteo Ricci sets an example for our communities of people from different cultures and religions to bloom in the spirit of hospitality and mutual respect,” the Pontiff said.

Link (here)

Photo is from the film.