Benedictines in China Before 1949

The Benedictines in China

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Fr Jeremias Schröder, OSB
Abbot of St Ottilien, Germany

Benedictine Missionaries at Yanji

At about the same time as the American Benedictines, German missionary Benedictines arrived in the north of the country. En route for China, the Benedictines of St Ottilien passed by Korea. Since 1909 the first Benedictine missionaries had been active in Seoul, where they had founded the Abbey of St Benedict. In 1920 they received from the Holy See a very large mission territory in the north of Korea. The following year Propaganda added to their mission territory also parts of Manchuria in the north-east of China. Since the huge distances made the administration of this territory from the abbey in northern Korea virtually impossible, the Chinese part was separated off in 1928. The first superior of this Chinese Benedictine mission was P. Theodor Breher, who received the title of ‘apostolic prefect’. With a surface area of 5,800 square kilometers, the territory to be evangelized was slightly larger than Bavaria. The population of Manchuria was essentially Chinese. Nevertheless, the colonial Japanese régime compelled a growing number of Koreans to emigrate northwards, which gave rise also to the establishment of important Korean parishes.

Initially P. Theodor had a dozen priests under him, who were distributed through eight different missions. In the course of the following years the number of monks increased with the arrival of European reinforcements. In 1931 they were also joined by Olivetans from the Swiss town of Cham, who took charge of the schools and hospitals.

The principal mission, in the town of Yenki, founded in 1922, became a real monastery and in 1934 was raised to the rank of the Abbey of the Holy Cross; P. Theodor became the first Abbot. Like the Korean Abbey of Tokwon, the abbey provided space for workshops and a printing press as well as directing a major seminary and a boarding school. In 1937 the Vatican took note of the fine development of the mission and raised Yenki to the rank of an apostolic vicariate, whose superior had the status of a bishop. Thus P. Theodor received episcopal ordination on top of his abbatial blessing. At this time the vicariate was composed of 24 priests who, divided between 15 principal missions and 140 outstations, looked after 14,000 Christians. Seventeen brothers worked in the workshops and helped in the process of evangelization. Fifteen Swiss sisters were engaged in the education of girls, looking after the sick and ensuring the upkeep of the different missions. Thousands of children received instruction in ten state-recognized schools, and the older children, especially the girls, received their necessary education in the ten schools for the poor which had been set up. The number of Christians increased by an average of 1,400 each year, including adult baptisms and children of Christian parents. After the end of the 1930s there came also the ordinations of the first indigenous priests, who lent a strong hand to the missionary Benedictines. And in 1938 the first indigenous candidates were received into the novitiate.

Meanwhile, however, it was a troubled age: in 1931 Manchuria was occupied by the Japanese, who were manipulating the last Chinese Emperor, PuYi, like a marionette. Chinese and Korean resistance fighters battled with the Japanese. Bands of armed brigands profited from the general unrest to terrorize the flat countryside and ceaselessly attack the missions. In 1932 a missionary, P. Konrad Rapp of St Ottilien, was attacked and killed by drunken Japanese soldiers. At the same time typhus cost a number of missionaries their lives.

Under Japanese domination the Manchurian state at first showed itself reasonably well-intentioned towards the mission. The main Catholic schools of the region received official recognition in 1938. But, as in Korea, towards the end of the war the Japanese attitude to the mission visibly hardened. In 1944 the schools were nationalized and the Benedictines were forbidden to move around.

The news of the capitulation of Japan in August 1944 was greeted with great joy by the Koreans. However, the missionaries already had a premonition that, by contrast, the Russian threat scarcely gave grounds for rejoicing. Officers were billeted in the monastery, attacks against the missions caused deaths and wounded, work on the missions became more and more difficult.

In the midst of this difficult situation the news arrived from Rome that the missionary territory of Yenki had been raised to the rank of a diocese on 11th April 1946, together with a number of ecclesiastical limitations. Obviously, at such an agonized moment, this hardly made any difference. Meanwhile the Soviet troops had begun to evacuate Manchuria. On 20th May the Chinese communists in their offensive made an assault on the monastery and arrested the monks and nuns. They were exiled to Namping on the Korean frontier and spent two years there, admittedly exposed to less suffering than their Korean brethren who were arrested three years later, and many of whom lost their lives in a work-camp.

After two years the monks were allowed to return to their devastated abbey. There they were subjected to heavy tasks which made spiritual ministry impossible. The material misery of the community was also considerable. A priest who had hidden in the large town of Harbin contributed to the survival of the community, thanks to his regular winnings at gambling games, which incidentally were also forbidden. Mgr Theodor Breher, now seriously ill, saw with his own eyes the decline of the mission for whose construction he had been so largely responsible.

After an intense interior conflict the bishop decided to allow a progressive withdrawal of the missionaries. The martyrdom of Mgr Theodor began when he was obliged to ask the communist commandant of the province for his own permission to withdraw. The strategy of progressive pressure applied to the mission by its new masters in the course of the years had succeeded. As a first step only the oldest and weakest of the brethren were allowed to return to Europe, which would permit the others to continue. As none of them wanted to make the first move, in the end the bishop himself finally left with the first group in autumn 1949. A final blow awaited him in Europe: in the course of an audience Pope Pius XII showed himself extremely irritated at the withdrawal of the Benedictines, and treated the old and sick bishop in a manner less than charitable. It was with a broken heart that Mgr Theodor Breher, founder of the Abbey of the Holy Cross at Yenki and pioneer of the Church of Manchuria, died on All Souls Day, 1950.

The definitive collapse of the mission occurred by stages. When their monastery had been evacuated, the monks were able to lodge for a time in the monastery of the nuns, and, in September 1950, they settled in a parish of the western part of Yenki. In November they were ejected from the town and found a final refuge in the mission of Baldogu. In August 1952 the last Europeans were expelled from the mission territory.

The indigenous brothers, mostly Korean, were able to flee to Korea and later share in the foundation of the Abbey of Waegwan in South Korea. Subsequently a large number of the expelled Europeans too were able to take up their activity again. The last surviving religious of Yenki was P. Arnold Lenhard, who died shortly before his hundredth birthday in 2003.