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The Catholic Church in China, of Nanjing mourns the death of a 104-year-old nun. Already in 1945, before the take-over of the Communists, she had taken vows for the Daughters of Charity. She was then sent to work in the factory during the Cultural Revolution, she said of that very hard time: "I never lost hope because I had faith in God". It was only at the age of 64 that she was able to return to her ministry in the city of Wuxi. Given a special permit in 2000, she had the joy of meeting St. Pope John Paul II while on pilgrimage in Rome.
Nearly eighty years of religious life lived through even the most difficult times for Catholics in China. This is the story of Sr. Jiang Lihua, a religious sister who died on February 6th, 2023 in the Chinese province of Yangsu.
Born on 29 December 1918, she was 104 years old when she died (calculated as 106 according to the Oriental count, based on lunar birthdays). Born into a Catholic family for generations, she joined the congregation of the Daughters of Charity in Shanghai in the 1940s and took her first vows in 1945.
She was therefore one of that generation of priests and nuns formed before Mao's Communist Revolution and who, after the expulsion of all foreign missionaries, found themselves having to live the test of fidelity to their vocation.
Sr. Jiang had told her story personally a few years ago in an interview and in a video published by the UCANews agency, during a stay in Hong Kong. Even some of her relatives, she recounted, viewed her with suspicion because she had been a nun. She was sent to work in a food factory.
Her strength in those years was fidelity to prayer: "I did not recite the prayers in front of others," she still recalled, "but deep in my heart, without texts but from memory, I asked God's help not to be tempted to fall and to have the possibility of returning to my congregation. I never lost hope because I had faith in God."
That wish could come true with the first openings of the 1980s: it was then that Sr Jiang, then 64, was able to return to work for the Church in the city of Wuxi in the diocese of Nanjing. And she continued to faithfully carry out her ministry there ever since.
Of those early years, she recalled in the interview with UcaNews the challenge was to return to transmitting the faith: "Every summer we organised catechism and Bible study courses for children, with about 200 participants."
In 2016, reflecting on her ministry she said: "I cannot make any difference to the world at this age but I believe that God has his own plan for the Catholic Church in China."
Sources: AsiaNewsIT and UCAN News - Image Screenshot from Video linked above of UCAN News
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