On 25 March 2021, two members of the Sisters of Our Lady of Hanyang made their final professions at St Columban’s Church in Hanyang, China.
It was a joyful day for Sr Fiona Yang Fuli and Sr Columban Zhu Wenjuan.
The choir sang with full voice during the Mass on this joyful occasion. At the end of the liturgy, congregational leader Sr Clara Zhang thanked all those who attended, expressing appreciation for their prayers and encouragement for the congregation.
Founded in the 1930s by Columban missionary, Bishop Edward Galvin, the congregation has experienced the full ebb and flow of China’s recent history.
Bishop Galvin was ordained Bishop of Hanyang in 1927 when he was 44.
The next number of years brought their own struggles in times marked by political ferment, wars and floods, the severity of one inevitably competing with the tragedy of the others.
In the years following World War II the unfolding of domestic political events led to increased pressure on all Christian missionaries in China.
In 1947, Bishop Galvin wrote in a letter “the pep has gone from me”. The difficulties of the time were obviously taking their toll on him.
In the face of the advancing Communist Army, Bishop Galvin disbanded the congregation for the safety of its members and to give them an opportunity to make a new life in what was to prove a hostile environment.
The eventual departure of missionaries from all parts of China in the early 1950s brought an end to the dedicated apostolic involvement of many people in China.
Within a few years the Church was suppressed by the civil authorities. A quarter century of silence was to follow, a silence assumed by some people to mean that the Christian faith had disappeared from China.
Bishop Galvin was escorted from St Columban’s Cathedral, Hanyang on the 17th of September 1952 in preparation for his departure from China. In a letter recalling the events of that emotional day, he described how he turned around for one final look.
Of that painful moment he wrote, “I blessed the compound and the cathedral, the whole diocese; its priests, its Sisters and the people. I put them under the protection of Our Lord and his Blessed Mother and of St Columban, the patron of the diocese and of the cathedral. It was all that I could do.”
In the early 1980s economic reform and some religious freedom led to the re-emergence of faith communities all over China, including the Sisters of Our Lady of Hanyang.