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THE VINCENT LEBBE COMMITTEE PRESENTS
China seen from afar...
..beautiful, exotic, mysterious...
China is peaceful, religious, and prayerful,
..honoring the ancestors...
..refined and subtle,
..fond of esthetics,
..respectful of beauty in art and in daily life...
China of the hinterland and China of the peasants,
..a billion men and women repeating the same gestures
..again and again for 5000 years.
Hard working China,
..moving along with time,
..preserving its identity throughout its long history
and preparing for the future !
Modern China...
..active in honoring its past,
..like here in Taiwan at the Martyrs’ Memorial !
The heroes of the China-Japan war are honored in this temple.
A real pantheon,
..a shelter for a huge altar
..covered with wooden tablets with the names of these heroes on them.
Every day, some hundreds among them are honored by the nation.
Only one white man among them, a Belgian, Vincent Lebbe,
..known here as LEI MING YUAN, his Chinese name.
Thunder rumbling in the distance
The first three characters from the top are those of LEI MING YUAN,
thunder rumbling from the distance.
The fourth and fifth characters recall his heroism.
The last three characters mean : where his soul is.
The whole inscription, read from bottom to top, means :
« This is to convene the spirit of LEI MING YUAN the hero ».
Professor Chiang Fu Tsung had been the director to the National Library
..and the conservator of the national museum since 1937.
He is revered by all as a great figure of the Chinese cultural world.
To understand Vincent Lebbe’s destiny, we need to go back to last century.
China was called « the Middle Kingdom »
..and viewed itself as the center of the world.
A world superior by its wealth and the antiquity of its culture.
One example among many :
in 1844, the head of the Chinese diplomatic service
wrote to the Emperor as follows :
« After cajoling the English Barbarians,
the French and American Barbarians put in an appearance this year too.
I dealt with them so as to keep them in good humor.
Raised in foreign lands,
..these Barbarians are unable to understand the business of the Middle Kingdom ».
It is hard to understand, but good to know anyway.
Neighboring Japan seizes Korea and Taiwan.
England sends gunboats to enforce the *** trade.
Then the other Western nations win concessions in the main cities and ports.
Forced to her knees before foreign canons,
..imperial and superb China is reduced to a mere market at the mercy of the Powers.
The railway of the Whites is a sure sign of this colonization.
1900: Rebellion.
Symbolized by a clenched fist, the fist of Justice,
..which gives the name of the Revolt : the Boxer Rebellion.
Whites are hunted down and Chinese Christians are particularly singled out :
..30,000 are massacred.
Christians, missionaries and soldiers take refuge in the embassies in Beijing,
..and withstand a siege of 40 days.
They were eventually freed by an expeditionary force from 7 Western countries.
The Christians are in a very ambiguous position indeed.
In addition to the various territorial, commercial and other concessions
..the Western powers have wrung from China over the past 50 years,
..France has claimed the right to protect the missionaries of every nationality.
On their arrival,
..the missionaries come under what is known as the French Protectorate.
The Church depends on France,
..even though at home the French government is anti-clerical.
And so, in law suits over land,
..personnel,
..or security matters,
..the missionaries
..could appeal to the French ambassador.
He would protect them and intervene with the Chinese ministries on their behalf.
This did not only apply to the French missionaries,
..but to those of all nationalities,
..even though for a time, Germany and Italy tried
..to withdraw from this protectorate in order to exert it themselves.
As a result,
..it is understandable that in the political context of the time,
..the French Protectorate became practically indispensable.
But I think it led to abuses...
Many missionaries abused it
..by failing to realize that they should not colonize China
..by introducing elements from the French culture,
..but rather that they should try to understand Chinese culture,
..respect it
..and, as a result, make the Catholic Church in China as Chinese as possible.
That, indeed, was Father Lebbe’s intuition.
« I was walking with some missionaries on Coal Hill,
..which is part of the Imperial Palace grounds.
From the beautiful imperial pavilion on the top,
..you have a view over the whole city of Pekin. It looks wonderful.
Towers, temples, upturned roofs everywhere,
..but in the middle of this Oriental fairyland,
..there is a great big eyesore, not pretty, no, not pretty at all :
..it is the Petang, the Western section.
The style and the colour of the houses,
..especially the cathedral, everything is deliberately non-Chinese. »
These are the words of Vincent Lebbe.
He arrived in China early 1901 and was hurt by how foreign the Church was.
From the beginning, he took the side of the Chinese.
Vincent Lebbe was the oldest of seven children in a fervent Catholic family,
which set great store by honesty.
During his studies he was caught up by the movements of the time and wrote :
« I am for the critics and the democrats.
Our century has two great passions : justice and truth. »
It’s worth pointing out, first of all,
..his international origins.
He was born in Ghent in 1877
..because his parents just happened to be in Ghent at the time, being newly married.
In fact his family lived in Ypres.
His father was born in Poperinge and Vincent’s grandfather was Flemish,
..but his grandmother was French.
His mother, Louise Barrier,
..held British nationality but came from France.
So from the start he had very international origins.
And it is true that he became passionately attached,
..and totally open to French culture that he will always love.
He said that he would go to China to help people love God and love France,
but no sooner had he arrived than he wrote about the Boxer War :
« 99% of the wrongs come from the foreigners.
We put down a people because the colour of their skin is different from ours.
Our armies leave behind them a long trail of blood and dirt. »
In 1900, the Catholic Church numbered 750,000 faithful, 900 missionaries,
..40 white bishops and 470 Chinese priests.
The latter were rarely in positions of any responsibility.
Lebbe wanted to be Chinese. He dressed like the Chinese,
..and made himself a pigtail with hair sent by his little sister.
« Here we are both in reality and in mentality a foreign body.
Our churches are quasi-colonies.
We are outside the people and we are unable to assimilate.
We are like varnish over a piece of furniture and not like the yeast in the dough. »
Here is Lebbe in the countryside.
The parishes are widely spread and he is always on the road,
..happy to be acquainted with the ordinary people.
He is especially happy to see them become converts.
It could be said that the waters of baptism flow in torrents.
His rapid progress in the study of the language helps him to make contact.
He teaches.
He is already the public speaker who will, later on, move the crowds.
His friend, Anthony Cotta, came to join him in 1906.
They had met since the seminary.
Cotta was gifted with great intelligence.
His father was Egyptian and his mother Austrian.
He was a few years older than Lebbe.
Father Lebbe made friends with everyone :
the peasants, the poor, the workers, the students, the intellectuals...
With his friendship and his way of acting he won the hearts of the Chinese.
When a Chinese person feels respected he respects others.
And, to show his gratitude,
..he accepts what you have to give.
What Father Lebbe had was the Gospel, the Good News, Jesus Christ.
1906: Lebbe was appointed dean of the Tianjin district.
Tianjin was a university town and a port city.
It had over a million inhabitants,
..but only 6,000 Catholics.
Lebbe, however, was very busy from the start.
So, as soon as he arrived in Tianjin,
..he made contact with the Chinese authorities of the town.
That had never been done before.
He had already begun to study Chinese classics.
Again, it was circumstances that will lead him to take the initiative,
..especially in newspaper printing....
..and more broadly in the contacts he made. Perhaps that was the most outstanding
..in what will be called the « Tianjin Method » :
his concern to work with the Chinese in humanitarian activities
..even though they were not thinking of becoming converts.
With the local elite.
Without any ulterior motives,
..especially in the context of the Red Cross,
..helping people affected by flooding, etc ...
This was the Father Lebbe’s conversion :
instead of the conventional attitude of the missionaries with regard to the Chinese,
..he started welcoming the Chinese person as he/she was.
Now there is a paradox in his life :
on the one hand, his concern for the poor, and on the other, his concern for the elite.
The conversion of the elite was a condition for the conversion of the whole people.
1911 : Sun Yat Sen overthrew the Qing dynasty and proclaimed the Republic.
China woke up.
Father Lebbe joined in the movement.
He opened a lecture hall, then two, then eight.
Discussions on the future of the country and on religion were held.
What will China’s future be ?
The crowds celebrate the Republic.
Sun Yat Sen is proclaimed President.
But he does not have sufficient support.
So he gives way to the most powerful man in Peking, General Yuan *** Kai.
The country is divided.
So Father Lebbe started campaigning.
He told the Catholics :
« Love your country, that is what it is to be a Christian. »
He told the non-Catholics :
« God loves China. »
In other words, religion will save the country.
This was something new which moved the Chinese.
These lecture notes were, therefore, published : more than 30,000 copies.
Other people came to join him in speaking to the crowds.
A vast movement was begun and taken in hand by the laity.
At the same time, he also developed Catholic Action,
..the laity accepting responsibility for the Church. That was quite new.
It was certainly so in China.
In Europe it had hardly just begun. Catholic Action began in study circles.
In Belgium it became the ACJB, Belgian Youth Catholic Action.
In France, however, the ACJF had begun since the late 19th century.
1914 : the First Congress of Catholic Action was held in Tianjin.
People came from everywhere.
Lebbe even wrote to the European newspapers about it.
He loved China and he wanted everyone to love China.
He liked talking to the crowds so much and wanted to talk to them even more.
At the end of 1915 he founded a daily newspaper, the Yi *** Bao,
which means Public Good.
Very soon he was printing 20,000 copies.
He also founded a weekly publication for women.
His genius was to leave the ownership of the newspaper
..to the Chinese and not to the Church.
Lay people, Christians and many other people, were the editors.
The paper soon won a reputation for its independent stance.
He was fighting for China and for justice.
Thanks to the paper, many people now saw that the foreign religion
..was gradually becoming Chinese.
Father Lebbe encouraged a Christian, a certain Mr. Lou,
..to run a newspaper, the Yi *** Bao.
It was a Catholic paper,
..set up purely on Father Lebbe’s initiative.
This paper became the leading paper in Northern China.
In the South there was also a main paper called the Qing Bao.
Later there was also an edition of the Yi *** Bao for the South.
Chinese culture is very old.
As you know, for 5000 years we have always had the same written script
..although the language is spoken differently.
It requires a lot of effort
..to know Chinese writing and Chinese culture.
From the moment he arrived, Father Lebbe studied the Chinese classics.
He knew how to write Chinese with a brush.
His calligraphy was very well known.
With all this, Father Lebbe won the heart of the Chinese.
Truly he became Chinese.
He was always moving, a man of action.
How could he find the patience to write like a Chinese ?
His handwriting in French is sparse.
Though Lebbe was always busy, yet he took the time to write many letters.
On the other hand, his writing in Chinese is perfect, classical, careful...
Lebbe shows his respect for the culture of his country.
1916 : Vincent Lebbe had been in Tianjin for ten years.
The new Republic was in difficulties.
China was not united
..and the Western powers took advantage of the disorder.
Lebbe continued his fight in a China that was falling apart.
England seized Tibet, Russia took Mongolia.
Even worse, Japan won a foothold in Shantung.
Not far away Tianjin was relatively quiet.
The Chinese town covered 14 km2.
14 km2 was also the area of the Western town,
..those areas ceded to Russia, Great Britain,
..Germany, Japan, Belgium, Austria, the United States… and France.
In the South lay the Chinese quarter of Lao Si Kai.
The bishop of Tianjin bought some land there and built a cathedral...
..right next to the French concession.
These concessions held China under foreign sway.
Since the opening of the ports, to England at first,
..then to France and the United States after the *** War of 1840,
..not only were the Chinese customs run by foreigners
..and all trade in their hands,
..but also, from 1895, it was European industry
..that had the right to establish itself in China
..in all these concessions which were then granted one after the other.
So there was a whole wave of industrialization which competed with
..and finally finished off traditional Chinese handicraft.
In Lao Si Kai,
..Chinese businessmen began to set up business around the cathedral.
The French Consul sought to expand the French concession.
He used the pretext of protecting the mission
..to open a road up to the cathedral.
He set up little markers...
..which the Chinese removed.
After a growing series of incidents,
..the French police arrested the head of the Chinese police force
..and held him in the concession prison.
The immediate reaction : a tract of the Chinese,
..written in French, was distributed throughout the town.
The Chinese expressed their indignation and compared the French action
.. to Germany’s invasion of Belgium two years earlier, in 1914.
Street demonstrations broke out,
..then a general strike by the Chinese employees in the concession
..and even, it is said, by the nannies.
The Yi *** Bao naturally took sides with the Chinese.
The Consulate put pressure on the Bishop to silence Father Lebbe.
The French Foreign Ministry in Paris put the same pressure on his superiors.
The Bishop of Tianjin ordered him to remain neutral.
Father Lebbe replied by letter :
« Simply because of our nationality,
..public opinion in China already tends largely to assume
..that we support our fellow citizens.
But the French are wrong...
Instead of keeping silent,
..let the Church be, as elsewhere, the last refuge for what is right
..where a word of justice is never afraid to be spoken out.
The neutrality you propose is impossible to maintain.
Please do not force me to choose
..between disobeying
..and obeying,
..thus acting against my conscience ».
He concluded by asking to be sent away from Tianjin.
He was sent straight away to the other end of the diocese, then to central China.
His fellow priests who supported him were dispersed.
Anthony Cotta was sent abroad.
He was someone who knew what the wanted.
And when he wanted something,
..he took the initiative and ploughed ahead.
But always respecting his superiors and always according to the law.
That was what was remarkable about him. If the superiors said no, that was no for him.
Of course, that did not stop Father Lebbe from beginning again, without telling them.
For the time being,
..he suffers from being exiled to a region where he could not speak the dialect.
In Tianjin he was known to everyone. Here he became a total stranger.
He had to start from scratch.
Little by little, he takes courage and writes to Rome,
..to the man who has always been his friend, Mgr Vanneufville, a French priest,
..who wrote for the newspaper La Croix, and who had a few contacts in the Vatican.
What remained a mystery,
..was his obedience.
Someone once put it rather well saying that
..he had never disobeyed
..and was never obedient.
He always managed to do what he wanted
..by appealing to superiors who agreed with his way of thinking.
So,…
..he was not obedient in a passive sense.
He always took the initiative
..and was a cross for his immediate superiors.
What really characterized him was his being always ready to respond to events.
And in fact, his was an obedience to events
..rather than to the rules.
Here is Cotta again.
Yes, still here.
Cotta disobeyed and refused to leave.
While Lebbe was active in parish work,
..Cotta kept writing reports to Rome,
..about their own personal drama and about the problems of the missions.
Cotta saw the problem intellectually.
With Father Lebbe, it was more a matter of feelings
..and intuition.
And so, Cotta was better able to make an objective analysis, well set-out.
It should be said, he was more of a fighter in some ways.
He was more aggressive.
Lebbe acted, caring more about the respect for other people than Cotta did.
So Father Lebbe had lost his superiors’ support.
He turned to the authorities in Rome.
What did Rome do ? What did Rome say ?
In Rome was William Van Rossum, the Cardinal responsible for the missions.
Pope Benedict XV was there too.
In the colonial world of 1919, both longed for Chinese bishops.
But Rome was silent…
Cotta was first to study the question of the bishops with a little more in-depth,
..and to ask why there were no Chinese bishops.
He was struck by the contrast between Rome, which, since the 17th century,
..had asked that local persons be consecrated bishops,
..and the attitude of the missions in China.
Rome listened. Rome kept silent. But not for long.
A French bishop of the Paris Foreign Missions, Mgr. de Guébriant,
..was sent to China to carry out a thorough inquiry on the situation.
But Rome wanted to move faster.
It was a real bombshell that exploded.
Even before Mgr. de Guébriant had got back to Rome,
..Pope Benedict XV published an Encyclical Letter,
..Maximum Illud, addressed to the missions.
« It is regrettable that countries with a high degree of civilization
..have not yet been able to produce their own bishops to govern them. »
To calm things down, Mgr. de Guébriant asked Father Lebbe to leave China.
After twenty years in China, Vincent Lebbe left for Europe.
There he would discover another China,
..the China of Chinese workers who had come to work in the war industries.
And also that of Chinese students.
It was a world of poverty, nationalism and anticlerical struggles.
He noted right away that a lot was at stake.
There was the movement of May 4, 1919 in China, in Peking
..when for the first time, patriotic opinion was speaking out about the concessions
..that China had to grant to Japan at the Versailles Peace Conference.
So, it was when the Communist Party was formed in China in 1921.
At that time already, a number of Chinese students had gone abroad,
..to Great Britain and the United States first, and then, from 1906 on, to France.
They were welcomed by the radicals,
..the socialists and the anticlericals.
Father Lebbe realized that there was a real race on,
..if the Chinese elite or some of them at least, were to become Christians.
Those students meant everything to him. Absolutely everything !
From time to time, when something big was on, he would pass through Brussels
..where I lived and where my father was, like a gust of wind.
So sometimes we knew… No, in fact we never knew in advance.
We only knew because Chinese students would call,
two, three, four, five of them...
Then we said :
« Ah, if the Chinese students are calling that means Uncle Freddy is on the way.
So we will wait for him ».
He had a special way of ringing the doorbell.
He always rang :
« One God in Three Persons ».
Ding... ding, ding, ding.
And then we children,
..would rush to see who would be the first to open the door for him.
He came – he was quite short, short and small -
..with a huge French priest’s hat,
..shoes that were too big for him and a huge bag on his shoulder.
Two of us had to carry that sack with all his papers in, it was so heavy.
Then we helped him take off his coat
..and my first duty was to get his Chinese pipe ready.
The first students Vincent Lebbe got together formed an association.
They made themselves a flag.
And then, and that was Lebbe’s style, a newspaper, all hand written.
And, likewise in Lebbe’s way, a newspaper like the Yi *** Bao,
..Christian and political.
It echoed the major events going on in China.
Then there was a monthly bulletin printed in Paris and Louvain.
The city of Verviers will also be interested in Father Lebbe.
Father Purnal had invited a missionary to preach
..on the first universal day of prayer for the missions.
It was Father Lebbe who was chosen to preach here at Ste Julienne.
It was on July 9, 1922.
It was for all the parishes of Verviers.
There is an amusing incident about this : Father Lebbe had told the parish priest
..that he would arrive at 3 am by the express train from Paris,
..but that on no account was anyone to come and pick him up.
He would take some work with him at the station and keep busy
..until the church was opened for the first mass.
Father Boland said to the parish priest :
« We are being sent an eccentric. He does not know how to behave like everyone else,
..come at a rather more reasonable time ».
Reasonable ? Father Lebbe was never reasonable.
Neither was Father Boland.
His house was middle-class from the outside but the door was never locked
..and he took in young people day and night.
They used to be called « the little devils », because with Father Boland
..they dared to do everything, and they could do almost anything.
Several of these youngsters would later join Lebbe in China.
Father Boland went on to open a seminary for them.
He was very attractive too. He was cheerful. He was...
Whatever he said was amusing and he knew how to cheer people up.
It was great to have him with us.
Not everyone liked him.
Many people distrusted him.
He was not pious enough, reserved enough...
He smoked like a Turk.
All those young assistant priests set those young people alive.
They had come through the war and were drunk, one must say, with victory...
..in religion as well :
« We will make our brothers Christians again. We swear it, by Jesus Christ. »
What the Young Christian Workers sang, we also sang.
That was the mood of the times.
And then, what Father Lebbe brought first and foremost was to say :
« Listen : don’t remain shut up in your own little group, but help us.
You are part of the Church, you are catholic, you are universal.
And above all don’t forget the great continent of China,
you who live in your little group of Belgians ».
Do not forget the great continent of China.
That was, indeed, Lebbe’s message to those
..who supported his work for students everywhere : in Paris, Lyons, Lille
..as well as in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Great Britain.
Lebbe had to provide accommodation, schooling and board for each student.
Many of them went on to become influential people,
..when they went back to China.
We are, back in Belgium, at the Norbertine Abbey of Averbode,
..a key place in the conversion of Chinese students to Christianity.
Lebbe gave many retreats there.
Not all the students asked to be baptized,
..but all discovered or rediscovered their homeland in Lebbe.
At Averbode and in other places,
..three hundred of them were baptized in the seven years
..that Lebbe spent working for them as much as he could.
Cardinal Mercier was an active supporter of Lebbe’s work.
They spoke together about the question of consecrating Chinese bishops.
We will come back to this in a moment.
The Cardinal was also interested in the young Chinese Catholic Action movement,
..as here at the Averbode Congress in 1924.
The Abbey of Lophem near Bruges.
It also supported the Association.
It was here that China’s first ambassador to the Vatican
..came when he retired to become a Benedictine monk.
Claire Lin, a disciple of Father Lebbe, met Father Mao for us.
He was a former student in Lyons.
Father Lebbe is in the hearts of the Chinese.
No one among the Chinese could ignore him because he really loved the Chinese.
He loved China more than many Chinese did themselves.
Of course, Vincent Lebbe’s life was focused on his students only.
But he was also thinking of Rome.
Only there could his future return to China be decided.
Most of all, it was there that the issue of the Chinese bishops would be settled.
We are back in 1920.
Lebbe tells the authorities in Rome what he thinks.
« The winter, the long winter of our missions in China is over.
The time has come to form a living national Church,
..of one flesh with the people ».
He also wrote to Cardinal Mercier,
..asking him to support him in Rome.
Lebbe really trusted the Cardinal, of whom he once said :
« He is someone who dares to meddle in what is not his business ».
And the Cardinal will indeed find a way to get him to come to Rome,
..as Cardinal Suenens tells us.
What I remember about that was the trick used to get Lebbe to Rome.
It is said that Cardinal Mercier invited him to come for a consultation.
This way, he could tell his superiors :
« Look, I must go to Rome - he had been forbidden to go there -
..Cardinal Mercier has requested me for a consultation ».
That is how he eventually succeeded in getting to Rome.
Then, Mercier, introduced him to Van Rossum and everything followed on from that.
Well, those were small things but they have important consequences.
And so Vincent Lebbe was in Rome without his superiors knowing it.
He kept a diary each day.
December 20, 1920 : a warm welcome from Cardinal Mercier.
In the evening he went to see Cardinal Van Rossum, who said to him :
« I thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything that you did,
..for all that you have suffered from your religious obedience.
It has saved everything. »
Then Father Lebbe went on to speak about the Chinese bishops
..and the Cardinal said to him :
« Do you have a pencil ? Give me some names. »
And Father Lebbe wrote down the names of some Chinese priests
..whom he deemed worthy to be made bishops.
Eight days later Pope Benedict XV received Father Lebbe.
When he came out I met him in the street quite by chance.
We stopped and he suddenly said to me – I will never forget it - :
« I no longer believe in the Holy Spirit ! »
I was a little shocked.
But knowing Lebbe, I said to myself : « There must be some explanation. »
« I no longer believe. I have seen Him ! »
Then he said to me : « Something great is in the making ».
I think it was at that time – but he had to keep quiet about it,
..because at the time everything was still under the secrecy of the Holy Office -
..but you could guess that the Pope had given him the opportunity
..to name the first five Chinese bishops himself.
Rome, however, is an institution
..and all institutions are conservative to a large extent.
An institution is concerned about the long term.
..when Lebbe was doing a lot of things on the spur of the moment.
He was always inventing things.
So, in Rome,
..there was a certain sensibility with regards to the demands for a missionary renewal
..because Rome was further removed from nationalism
..than the missionaries in the country.
But Rome was also very prudent.
Ah… Yes… Rome’s prudence taking its time.
Years went by.
Vincent Lebbe wanted to go back to China. Impossible !
And still no Chinese bishops in sight.
There was some hope when he Pope sent Mgr. Costantini to China in 1922
..to pave the way for the key decisions,
..which Vincent Lebbe so longed for.
Discretely the Pope’s delegate chose the future bishops.
Pius XI succeeded Benedict XV.
In 1926, it was decided : the Pope will consecrate six bishops.
And he will do so himself in Rome on October 28.
Will the missionary world accept them ?
The diplomatic world was not delighted by the move.
Europe was still to remain the master of the world for a few more years.
Father Lebbe was there.
It was the anniversary day of his 25 years of priestly ordination.
It was also the 25th anniversary of the Pope’s own consecration as a bishop.
It was a day of many anniversary celebrations,
..but above all, it was a great moment for the universal Church.
As it was said, this moment was almost as important
..as when the Christian Church detached itself from the Jewish people.
Because at that moment,
..at least from the religious point of view, the Mediterranean world was left behind.
Until then there were no non-White bishops in the Catholic Church.
His dream has become a reality.
Vincent Lebbe went back to China, forever,
..adopted by one of the six bishops, Mgr Suen.
Having become officially Chinese,
..Lei Ming Yuan was back in the countryside in the depths of China.
I was there when he left. Oh, I will never forget that departure...
His last departure.
He had told me, moreover, that to go as a missionary for the second time
..is more crucifying, if one would put it that way,
..more poignant than the first time.
The first time one leaves – naturally it is heartbreaking, that is clear,
..especially with a family where people loved each other so much -
..but you leave full of enthusiasm, with the strength of youth.
All your projects are in your head and you do not know what will happen...
The second time, you know a little what to expect...
As always, we could not get near him
..because the Chinese were there
..- naturally his students were there and we were always in the third place -.
Then he kissed each one of us and got into the bottom of the compartment,
..at the very bottom, away from everyone and he said nothing.
You could feel he was very, very moved to be going...
He had only 13 years to live.
He was 50 and a Chinese citizen. He is happy
..not thinking that one day he will be honored by an army General who is the Head of State.
The situation was dramatic in the country. Sun Yat Sen has died.
General Ghiang K’ai-sheck has taken power. He wants to reunify and modernize China.
But the communist under Mao Zedong and General Zhu De are opposed.
Having been away for seven years, Lebbe is less interested in politics.
The plains of the North are immense. People are poor.
Lebbe feels he is called to thoroughly devote himself to the peasants.
He invents a new way of putting the Church among the people, the yeast in the dough.
In 1928, he founds a congregation of monks.
Well ! Not any monks. They will be peasant monks.
As poor as the peasants, spending some time in the monastery
..and some time among the people.
The aim is to proclaim Jesus Christ in the villages and to help the Chinese clergy.
At the same time, he founds a Congregation of women, the Little Sisters of Ste Therese.
Sister Saint Luc from France joins Father Lebbe in 1931 when she was 22.
When the bishops came to China, they were given places that, all in all,
..had almost no Catholics and no priests.
So they had a lot of problems and no money.
Such that Father Lebbe had to help the bishop of Ankwo financially
..because we had nothing.
There were a few Chinese priests but very few.
At the time it was considered unacceptable for foreigners,
..for Europeans, to be under Chinese bishops, so they all left
..and took with them all that they could.
So the bishop was left with just empty houses.
In Taiwan, we also met Bother Alexander Zhao.
He entered Father Lebbe’s monastery when he was 16.
The monasteries began like that :
several catechists in the villages wanted to become Trappists,
..but the abbey had been closed.
They really wanted to be monks.
As for Father Lebbe, he wanted them to be also real missionaries
..and be as poor as the peasants and the soldiers,
..both monk and donkey, and serve the people.
And so we had to be like the people in everything.
We had to live a life of poverty like the masses.
He created the Congregation of the Little Brothers to spread the faith. How ?
Naturally, to help the Chinese priests in all their work.
Father Lebbe did not lay out the tasks.
It was not a matter of knowing what formula
..or what method to use to serve the people.
The question was how one lived with the people.
Father Lebbe used to say to us :
« Whatever work you do, do it in the spirit of the Gospel
..and you will be among the peasants like yeast in the dough ».
Like yeast in the dough.
He hoped that China would be converted by the Little Brothers and Little Sisters.
It was a great ideal.
And so we began to open eye clinics.
And we had a lot of patients
..because there were a huge number of people with trachoma and a lot of blindness,
..a lot of people who could hardly see, many blind people.
So many that the clinics were very, very important.
If you go to live with the poor,
..the way, for example, the Liberation theologians are doing today,
..if you go to live with the poor, you will discover things
..that you would never find in the best of learned tomes.
Life, therefore, teaches more powerfully than texts and learning.
And I think Lebbe lived among the living.
So, as a result, he saw many things that others could not see.
We had to make all our clothes, shoes, everything.
You know, at the time life for the Chinese was very hard.
You had to harvest your own cotton,
..make it into threads and make the cloth and then make your clothes, all by yourself.
And so there was a lot of work.
Several Belgian priests came to work with Father Lebbe,
..because in 1930, he and Father Boland,
..founded a Missionary Society to be at the service of the Chinese bishops.
Father Lebbe can rest now.
He has prepared well for the future.
And then everything changed again.
1933 : the Japanese began to attack northern China.
1936 : there was all-out war.
Lei Ming Yuan would go to the battlefront and give his life for his people.
1933 : Japan invaded one province of China.
In the same year Vincent Lebbe left his congregation
..to join the Brothers of St John the Baptist.
Two years before Japan had invaded Manchuria.
The League of Nations had received a letter of protest from 16 Chinese bishops,
..written by Vincent Lebbe.
The League of Nations, the UN of its day,
..could do nothing and the nations remained indifferent.
China was alone.
Lebbe took 20 of his monks to the front,
..240 villagers and some Sisters, who were nurses.
They would be stretcher-bearers, looking after the wounded.
At first, the army was a bit reluctant
..and people were asking : « What does this foreign priest want ? »
But when they saw him at work, when they saw him giving himself to the wounded,
..eating the same food as the soldiers,
..then people were really impressed.
At the front you know, when there was no battle going on,
..we all met in a temple or an empty house
..and went on with the life of the Little Brothers and Little Sisters.
July 7, 1937 : Japan now attacked all over China.
In this photo we can see Vincent Lebbe.
To his left is Brother Alexander and some Brothers and soldiers.
He was to spend three years on the front with them and never went back to his diocese.
From the battlefront he wrote his spiritual testament to the monasteries.
To his Brothers he wrote :
« It is the deepest desire of the Little Brothers
..to unite patriotism and the Catholic religion.
What our country is longing for is not removed from the Gospel.
The mission of the Little Brothers,
..is to be at the crest of the first wave of this tidal surge. »
And that is what they did. Over 20,000 wounded persons were helped.
Vincent Lebbe became a hero for the 3rd army corps
..and Marshal Chiang K’ai-shek called him over.
He entrusted Lebbe
..with the task of creating of a special section in the 12th division.
He appointed him lieutenant, then colonel.
Lebbe was given the mission of arousing resistance
..behind the Japanese frontline.
At that time,
..he got to know the Communists who were fighting against Japan as he was.
In this photo he is wearing the badge of the patriotic section which he commanded.
However, he suffered because the Church was silent.
In fact the Apostolic Delegate, Mgr. Zanin
..recommended that the missionaries observe neutrality.
Moreover, it was the time of the axis Tokyo-Rome-Berlin.
Some Italian missionaries sympathized with Japan.
The European missionaries kept a painful neutrality.
Why do you say painful ?
Because they would almost have preferred
..the Japanese to be allowed to occupy the entire China.
So much so that some really
..did have an attitude that was completely against Chinese opinion.
The apostolic delegate, Mgr. Zanin, was Italian.
So he took an attitude of neutrality himself.
And tried to get all the missionaries to follow him.
Of course, that did not please the Chinese authorities, which was normal...
But it was a very delicate matter...
As for Zanin…, when he was told : « Take a stance for China or for Japan ! »
« Oh, I, he said, I am neither left nor right. The Church is above all that. »
Well, that scandalized people.
You have to be incarnate. You must struggle for the truth.
The truth is that China was reeling under the blows.
The truth is also horror.
We now know what happened after Nanjing was taken.
Some 100,000 or 150,000 civilians were massacred by the Japanese soldiers.
Bayoneted, buried alive, shot, ***.
How could Lebbe be Lebbe and a Christian,
..or simply just Lebbe, with the heart of fire which we know he had,
..without crying out in disgust, in revolt, in refusal to be neutral ?
« Lord, I prefer to die. I would die happily rather than live disgracefully, neutral,
..without being able to call good and evil by their proper names
..nor being able to throw all my blood on the side of the oppressed.
I must show, even if I were to be the only one in the world,
..the indignation of a Christian towards the world of imperialism.
No, I will never be a silent dog unable to bark. »
In the end the Apostolic Delegate, Mgr. Zanin,
..supported Father Lebbe and he loved the Little Brothers.
He was the one who paid for my studies so that I could become a priest.
The war went on.
The Japanese occupied the main transport routes.
Between them there was free space which the Communists wanted to take control of
..and they denied the Nationalists access to it.
And it was precisely where Lebbe and his collaborators were working.
Twice he met General Zhu De.
He also knew Zhou Enlai.
And yet he was put in prison by the Communists.
For 40 days, he kept his diary
..and spoke a lot about his health which was getting worse.
He was 63. He was exhausted.
His heart was broken
..because he realized that the Communists wanted to seize power only for themselves.
He wrote several letters, one to the general who had arrested him, another to Zhu De.
No reply.
Thanks to the intervention of Marshal Chiang K’ai-shek he was released.
Taken back to the wartime capital by airplane,
..he died on June 24, 1940, on St. John the Baptist’s Day.
To me, Father lebbe,
..he is a great apostle, a great missionary, a great Chinese.
A very little fellow.. Really, a very little fellow.