“I will go to China and die a martyr’s death,” declared the eleven-year-old Belgian boy upon finishing reading the biography of the missionary martyr Jean Gabriel Perboyre. When he passed away in Chongqing in 1940, Vincent Lebbe fulfilled the promise he had made to himself some fifty years earlier. He dedicated his entire adulthood to the people and to the Catholic Church of China, becoming Chinese in dress, language, and loyalty and embracing their struggles, joys, and pains. He became a perfect example of what Bishop Fulton Sheen called a “dry martyr.” [The term is used to describe those who were not murdered or killed for the Christian faith, but endured hardships such as poverty or illness in order to promote Jesus Christ.] His martyrdom at the hands of persecutors was not quick and violent but lasted almost forty years as he suffered many blows from friends and foes for courageously denouncing injustice in the church and the civil society of China.

Today Vincent Lebbe (pronounced with the final “e” silent) is far from being a household name – even in Roman Catholic circles – and yet he is one of the foremost figures of modem Catholicism. Of all the things that could be said about Vincent Lebbe, his spirituality, his total identification with the Chinese people, his stand for justice, and his creativity in fostering new forms of apostolate constitute the most significant facets of his legacy.

Fr. Vincent Lebbe in his office. Circa 1912-1913. © Société des Auxiliaires des Missions (SAM) China Photograph Collection, Whitworth University Library, Spokane.

Spirituality

The future missionary to China was born on August 19, 1877, in Ghent, Belgium, and was baptized under the name of Frederic. Freddy, as he was known to his family, was the firstborn of seven children. His mother, an English convert of French descent, was a deeply spiritual woman who had considered a religious voca­tion. His father, a lawyer, possessed a keen sense of justice and integrity. Their generosity to the poor, their stand for justice, their kindness and concern for each other and for their children, and their steady practice of prayer reflected the strength of their inner convictions. Lebbe learned from his parents to live by the Beatitudes, and he never relented. In fact, his dedication to the poor and the oppressed, his unflinching stand for justice, his abnegation and submission to God’s will, and his constant and serene joy that so impressed those who met him, were strongly anchored in the spirit of the Beatitudes.

As already alluded to, the young Lebbe was so impressed by the biography of Jean Gabriel Perboyre that, on the day of his confirmation, he took the name of Vincent to signify his resolution to emulate the Vincentian missionary. It is therefore not surprising to see him, in November 1895, journeying to Paris to enter St. Lazare, the seminary of the Congregation of the Mission, whose priests are commonly called Vincentians, or Lazarists.¹ Upon arriving at the seminary, Lebbe identified himself by his confirmation name and thenceforth, except to his immediate family, became known to Westerners as Vincent Lebbe.

During his first two years of formation, the young novice gained a deep appreciation for the founder of the Lazarists, St. Vincent de Paul, and decided to emulate him. From his name­ sake, who used to say that charity that does not express itself in action is a sham,² Lebbe learned to stay in tune with his time, to identify problems, and to come up with solutions and remedies. While still in the seminary he wrote:”To be effective, we have to stay in tune with our time, adapt to its customs, ideas and manners of expression  We must enter in its movement not as counterforce, but rather to guide this world according to the light of faith and sound reason.”³ On Chinese soil, Vincent Lebbe was to pay dearly for translating those brave words into deeds, which turned his superiors and many foreign missionaries against him. At St. Lazare, Lebbe found in Anthony Cotta, an Egyptian seminarian a few years his senior, a kindred spirit who shared his ideals. Cotta, who possessed a deep appreciation for the writings of St. Paul, greatly contributed to the laying of a scriptural underpinning to Lebbe’s missionary spirituality. The apostolic interests, which Perboyre had been the first to arouse, combined with the fire and zeal of St. Paul and the calm and deliberate dedication of St. Vincent de Paul to shape Lebbe’s approach to missionary life. The bonds of friendship between Cotta and Lebbe grew even stronger over the years and sustained them through the many tribulations they brought on themselves by their staunch advocacy of the Chinese against the elitist mental­ity prevailing in the missionary community.

In the spring of 1898 Lebbe, then a first-year philosophy student, began his first serious and prolonged encounter with the mystery of the cross when his health started to deteriorate. Within two years, he became almost an invalid, suffering from terrible bouts of headaches and afflicted with an eye illness that rendered him at times unable to read. The following September, his hopes of going to China seemed crushed when his superiors informed him that his sickly condition disqualified him for the missions. Instead, he had been slated to become a professor in one of their seminaries of Europe and North America. Disap­pointed but abiding by what he considered to be the will of God, Lebbe let go of his original resolve. “Clinging to nothing, nothing, nothing except God,” he traveled to the Vincentian college in Rome to further his theological studies.⁴ This was just a rehearsal for the many times in his life when he would again be forced to put aside plans or abandon promising apostolates, for as sincere as they might have been, they were still too much his choice and could not become God’s work until he had renounced them. Then God never failed to take over.

Five months after being told to renounce his dream, Lebbe left Marseilles for China.

In this first instance, God took charge when Bishop Alphonse Favier, vicar apostolic of Beijing, came to Rome to report on the recent tragic events of the Boxer uprising. Lebbe informed the bishop of his desire to be a missioner in China, despite his poor health. Favier was so moved by Lebbe’s fiery enthusiasm that he convinced the Vincentian authorities in Paris to let the ailing seminarian accompany him back to Beijing. In February 1901, only five months after he had been told to renounce his dream, Lebbe sailed out of Marseilles for China.

When summer arrived, the sickly newcomer had managed to complete his theological studies at the Vincentian seminary in Beijing. But he knew that his superiors would not ordain him if his health did not show signs of improvement. Lebbe then made a novena to Jean Gabriel Perboyre, asking to be cured. By the end of the nine days of prayer and fasting, his request had been granted. Coincidence or not, he was ordained priest on October 28, 1901, on the feast of St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. For the rest of his life, Lebbe suffered occasional headaches, but his eyes never bothered him again.

Thirty years later, a friend asked him what spiritual program he would recommend for missioners. Lebbe replied that there was only one program, the same for all Christians, and that it consisted in “actualizing the Gospel in one’s own life without delay. “Drawing on a spiritual experience that had begun long before he set foot on Chinese soil, he then explained that this program could be achieved only through total renunciation, true charity, and constant joy: “Complete Renunciation, Caritas non ficta, Gaudete semper.… Note well that all the power of the program resides in the three words italicized  You will tell me that this is nothing very original, but I believe it is enough to enable you to become a saint. Try sincerely and you will soon see that the whole Gospel is there.”⁵

Chinese Among the Chinese

For the most part, the Catholic missionaries who were in China at the tum of the twentieth century preached the Gospel with great zeal, loved their converts, and contributed to their welfare without much thought of self. Yet their psychological attitude toward the Chinese was radically different from the one displayed a few centuries earlier by Matteo Ricci and his compan­ions. The industrial age had given Europe a sense of superiority and arrogance that most missionaries carried with them unconsciously. They looked down on the Chinese civilization and its people as inferior, odious, and full of corruption; they treated the Christians as children and kept the Chinese clergy insubordinate positions. They also relied heavily on the protection and interventions of the Western powers, France in particular, to preach their Christian faith. Some realized the harm being done but could not see a way out, taking refuge in the belief that God someday would take care of it. Lebbe was among the very few who, by their lifestyles, words, and deeds, dared to call for and bring about changes.

Just before his ordination, Lebbe made it clear in a letter to one of his brothers that he had cast all his life on the side of the Chinese so as to become one of them: “I am Chinese with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my strength. China is my lot and my country, and the Chinese are my brothers.”⁶ To signify this transformation, he signed his letter with his Chinese name, Lei Ming-yuan, “The Thunder Rolling in the Distance”-a thun­der he would indeed be to the foreign missionary community of China.

Lebbe went on to be “all things to all men,” becoming a Chinese among Chinese (Chinois avec les Chinois). From the time he arrived in China, he set himself apart from most missionaries by donning the cotton dress worn by Chinese priests and semi­narians instead of the Western-style cassock. He even shaved his head and wore a long Chinese pigtail until the Chinese republic of 1912 abolished this custom imposed by the Manchu dynasty.

He moved among the ordinary people just like one of them, refusing to travel on horseback, in sedan chair, or in rickshaw as most other missionaries did. And yet Lebbe was not one to let go a practical means of transportation when he saw one that would greatly facilitate his ministry without appearing ostentatious. Whether it was just for a few minutes’ ride in town or a long journey in the countryside, he and his bicycle became a familiar sight at a time when this mode of locomotion was still very rare in China.

Endowed with good memory and musical sense, he acquired a good command of the spoken language and eventually became one of the best foreign-born Chinese speakers of his time. With his sight restored, he developed the habit of setting time aside to read Chinese classics and to practice writing with a paintbrush. He soon used his mastery of the language not only to perform traditional ministries of instructing catechumens and visiting the poor and the sick but also to launch new ways of reaching Christians and non-Christians. In 1911, for instance, in Tianjin, Lebbe thought of opening public lecture halls as a way of getting into the life of the city and bringing the church before the public. Talks on religion were given every evening by Lebbe, Chinese priests, and educated laypersons. These halls, soon to number eight, also provided a forum for discussing contempo­rary social and moral questions in the light of the Gospel, and thereby for introducing Christ to the Chinese people. Conver sions, especially among intellectuals, multiplied at the rate of one hundred a month in some halls. Lebbe’s popularity was such that, by 1914, he was invited to speak in the largest non-Catholic public halls in front of several thousand Chinese, including high officials of the city. The following year when Japan handed China a note containing twenty-one demands, compliance with which would have effectively turned the country into a vassal state, Lebbe delivered several addresses on the love of one’s own country. One lecture in particular, entitled “Save the Country,” which described both what China needed as a country and the Christian teaching about salvation, was so well received that some thirty thousand copies were sold on the streets.⁷

Lebbe’s spiritual program for missioners was “total renunciation, true charity, and constant joy.”

Lebbe also utilized his command of the language in pioneering the use of news media by the Catholic Church. In 1912, with the help of his friend and well-known literary figure Ying Lianzhi, he began publishing Guang Yi Lu (The royal way), the first Chinese Catholic weekly. The paper, which soon sold in most Catholic vicariates, contained not only news about Christian activities all over China but also articles by Lebbe meant to enlighten Catholics about their duties and responsibilities as citizens of the new Chinese republic. Three years later, encour­aged by the success of Guang Yi Lu, Lebbe chose October 10, the Chinese national day, to launch the first Chinese Catholic daily, entitled Yi Sih Pao (The social welfare). The newspaper was an instant success among the Chinese, Christians and non-Chris­tians alike, because of the accuracy of its news and its indepen­dent outlook. Within three months, it became the leading daily in northern China.

The public hall lectures and the Catholic newspapers were only two among the many ways Lebbe encouraged lay apostolate. In 1909 he and a small group of missionaries in Tianjin estab­lished the Association for the Propagation of the Faith, which became the nucleus that eventually led to the formation of a nationwide Catholic Action movement.

In 1928 Lebbe was granted one of his dearest wishes when he received Chinese citizenship. Five years later, taking one more step toward his total assimilation with the Chinese, he left the Vincentians to join the Little Brothers of St. John the Baptist, a native congregation he had recently founded. When the war against the Japanese invaders intensified, Lebbe embraced China’s cause unreservedly and did not hesitate to demonstrate in deeds his patriotism as a Catholic Chinese citizen. He and the Little Brothers organized trained teams of nurses and stretcher bearers who were sent out on the battlefields to rescue the wounded. Within a few years, the organization was twenty thousand men strong.

In March 1940 Lebbe fell victim to renewed tensions be­tween the Chinese Nationalists and Communists. By then, hard­ ships had taken their toll on him. His body was that of an old man full of arthritis and feverish with ·malaria. During a six-week detention by the Communists, his health deteriorated rapidly. As his internal organs began to fail, his face turned yellow and waxy, and he would joke, “Look, I’m finally yellow, I’m abso­lutely Chinese!”⁸ Two months after his release, on June 24, 1940, the feasts of St.John the Baptist and Blessed Jean Gabriel Perboyre, he died surrounded by Chinese friends. Much more than his mastery of the Chinese language and the way he dressed, it was his spirituality that enabled him to empty himself of his foreign­ness and identify until his last breath with everything Chinese.

Passion for Justice

From childhood, Lebbe strove to live up to the words of the Sermon on the Mount. Among all the Beatitudes, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for upholding justice” (Matt. 5:10) is the one that first comes to mind when considering his missionary career. “I would be ready to die rather than go on living simply neutral, not daring to call good and evil what they are, not being able to be wholeheartedly on the side of the oppressed, even if I were the only person of my kind in the world, simply to give an example of Christian indignation.”⁹

For denouncing all sorts of injustices, Lebbe endured the pains of isolation and misunderstanding, ostracism and exile. In fact, the word “justice” and its synonyms are the terms appearing most frequently in his correspondence. He was especially relent­ less in saying that as long as foreigners remained in control, the Catholic Church in China would never prosper. To become Chinese, the church had to have its own Chinese leadership. “China to the Chinese, and the Chinese to Christ” was one of his favorite slogans.

What made Lebbe’s stand for justice especially painful for him was that, for the most part, it contradicted the prevalent attitudes of the missionary community concerning Chinese pa­triotism, the protectorate, and the native clergy. During his first sixteen years in China, Lebbe was often reprimanded by his superiors for treating the Chinese clergy as equals and was urged to give up what they called his “utopian ideas” of a new China and a Chinese church. They did not like his support of Chinese patriotism, which they considered a dangerous and disruptive movement. “What my superiors cannot forgive me is my belief that if we are to bring salvation to the Chinese, we must, especially today, not only love them but love China too, just as anyone loves his or her country – as a Frenchman loves France… What they find even less forgivable is my belief that the protectorate is harmful to China and the church and to have said so… And what perhaps they find most difficult of all to forgive is my belief that the establishment of a completely indigenous clergy is our first duty  and my saying that I would die happy if I could kiss the ring of the second bishop of China.”¹⁰

The Lao-Si-Kai affair of 1916 was the event that made the tension between Lebbe and his superiors boil over. Briefly said, the French bishop of Tianjin had constructed his cathedral on a piece of land purchased in a newly developing district of the city known as Lao-Si-Kai (Lao Xikai) that was adjacent to, but not part of, the French Concession. Trouble began when the French consul, who had built a road linking the concession to the cathedral, attempted, with the collusion of church authorities, to annex the land that lay along that road and to levy taxes on Chinese shops and residences. The Beijing government, together with the Chinese municipal authorities and the local population, protested vehemently. Lebbe and his Catholic newspaper, Yi Sih Pao, sided with the Chinese and published an open letter asking the consul to renounce his claims. But the bishop, pressured by the consul, asked the clergy and the Catholic press to maintain a strict neutrality in the affair. Meanwhile, Chinese Christians kept asking Lebbe what to do, and he could not honestly say that the French consul was in the right. Finally, Lebbe decided to appeal directly to the French Legation in Beijing through a personal letter in which he begged the French minister to intervene for the sake of the honor of France and the church. Unfortunately, the letter backfired. The minister’s response was an angry note to the bishop, whom he blamed for allowing such an “insolent and near traitorous” letter to be written by one of his priests.¹¹ Rather than disobeying his bishop’s directive to remain neutral in the ques­tion, Lebbe then requested a new assignment. Sent to a mission nine hundred miles away from Tianjin, he eventually opted, in 1920, to return to Europe.

Lebbe seemed to have lost, but in the long run, his position received the endorsement of the Holy See. It began with a small group of Chinese priests and foreign missionaries writing to Propaganda Fide to support him. Then in 1917 his friend An­thony Cotta forwarded to the prefect of Propaganda Fide a long memorandum composed by both of them urging Rome to put an end to the status of “spiritual colony,” in which the church in China was kept by foreign missionaries. It also profiled Chinese priests of great zeal and ability who could assume the new leadership. The document caught the attention of the cardinal prefect of the Propaganda and of Pope Benedict XV. The apos­tolic letter Maximum illud released in November 1919 was filled with the ideas and, at times, the exact words of Cotta and Lebbe’s memorandum. In addressing missionaries and mission heads, the pope condemned the doings of those who seemed more intent in “increasing the power of their own country rather than the kingdom of God” and deplored the absence of native priests in positions of leadership. Although never mentioned by name, the missionary church in China was the intended primary target of the letter.

The next pope, Pius XI, further disengaged the Catholic Church in China from France’s control by creating, in 1922, a permanent apostolic legation in Beijing and sending Bishop Celso Costantini to fill the position. Four years later, Pius XI decided the time had come for some local churches in mission territories to have their own leadership. This was the main thrust of his February encyclical Rerum ecclesiae, and the June letter Ad ipsis pontificatus primordiis made it clear that China was his primary target. On October 28,1926, the pope took the major step of ordaining six Chinese bishops, three of whom had been recommended by Lebbe. Lebbe was present at the ceremony, which took place in St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome, on the twenty­ fifth anniversary of his own ordination. A few months later, Lebbe was on his way back to China to serve under newly ordained Bishop Sun Dezhen. Although the decolonization of the Chinese church was to remain a slow and difficult process, it had reached the point of no return.

Founder of Societies

For Lebbe, the establishment of a native hierarchy was just one of the many steps that needed to be taken to bring about a Catholic Church rooted in the culture and society of China. Responding to the call of Rerum ecclesiae to consider the advantage of founding new congregations that would correspond better to the genius, character, and needs of different countries, he started two Chi­nese religious orders in 1928–one for men, called the Little Brothers of St. John the Baptist, the other for women, called the Little Sisters of St. Theresa of the Child Jesus. These men and women, once trained according to the strictest rules of the Trappist and Carmelite traditions, were sent in small groups to preach the Gospel while at the same time earning a living from the fruit of their hands. Their task and challenge was to contrib­ ute to the social renovation of China.

Lebbe was also committed to the training of lay Christians who would put faith and education to the service of the nation. With this in mind, he opened lecture halls and helped found the Catholic Action in China; he worked closely with prominent Catholic laymen such as Ying Lianzhi and Ma Xiangpo and supported their efforts to open a Catholic university; and during his 1920-27 European exile, he organized the Chinese Catholic Youth Association for Chinese studying abroad.

In 1927, just before returning to China, Lebbe also inspired the foundation of two unique groups of foreign missionaries. The Society of the Auxiliaries of the Missions offered an avenue for secular priests from Europe who, like Lebbe, desired to put themselves totally at the service of native bishops in newly established ecclesiastical jurisdictions. They became living signs of a relationship between sister churches based on equality, sharing, and service to one another and were the forerunners of the Fidei donum priests.¹² The Lay Auxiliaries of the Missions was the feminine counterpart to the priests of the Society of the Auxiliaries of the Missions. They too were a sign of things to come because they were established as a lay missionary group at a time when religious life was still the norm for most women organizations sanctioned by the Catholic Church. These Lay Auxiliaries opened the way for the development and diversification of lay missionary groups among men and women in the Catholic Church some two decades later.¹³

The Society of the Auxiliaries of the Missions became a sign of equality, sharing, and service between churches.

Conclusion

The legacy of Vincent Lebbe is that of a life uncompromisingly dedicated to the growth of the local church of China. Long before the word “inculturation” was coined, his whole missionary life was a testimony to the spirit and the meaning encompassed by that word.

His distinct spirituality of “total renunciation, true charity, and constant joy”¹⁴ gave him the freedom of being bold and challenging to others while nonetheless remaining humble and obedient. He thereby achieved a high degree of effectiveness and persuasion.

His sensitivity to Chinese culture at least equaled if not surpassed that of Matteo Ricci. He completely identified with his chosen people, becoming one of them, a Chinese among Chinese. His stand against injustice and his actions to bring about change were like claps of thunder that trigger the life-giving rain: they shook the foreign missionary community in China and began a process of renewal within the entire Catholic Church.

In the very long run, Lebbe paved the way for the 1939 revocation of the condemnation of the Chinese rites, the full recognition of a Chinese local Catholic Church in 1946, and much more. Truly enough, Cardinal Leon-Joseph Suenens, one of the major figures of the Vatican II council, described Lebbe as “the precursor of what were to become the major orientations of the council.”¹⁵

Notes

¹This Catholic religious community, founded in 1625 by Vincent de Paul, had as its first objective the home mission in the French countryside. Later, however, overseas missionary work became increasingly important, until by the nineteenth century it was the congregation’s chief activity.

²Paul Goffart and Albert Sohier, eds., Lettres du Pere Lebbe (Tournai: Casterman, 1960), February 7, 1900, p. 26.

³Ibid, May 1, 1900, p. 30.

⁴Ibid, December 25, 1899, p. 23; the sentiment is restated August 26, 1931, p. 276.

⁵Ibid,, August 26, 1931, pp. 278,280.

⁶Ibid, July 13, 1901, p. 39.

⁷Jacques Leclercq, trans. George Lamb, Thunder in the Distance: The Life of Pere Lebbe (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1958), p. 141.

⁸Ibid, p. 318.

⁹Lettres du Pere Lebbe, September 20, 1939, 307.

¹⁰Ibid, September 18, 1917, pp. 153-54. When Lebbe wrote this letter, the only Chinese bishop had been Lo Wenzao, ordained in 1685.

¹¹Ibid, June 1916, pp. 101-3.

¹²On April 21, 1957, Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical Fidei donum (Gift of faith), in which he called for all bishops to become personally involved in theglobal missionary activity of the He specifically encouraged Western bishops to share the “gift of faith” by making some of their diocesan priests available for a period of time to African bishops. This sharing of priests between dioceses occurs now on a worldwide scale.

¹³The Holy See’s early calls for the development of a lay mission apostolate can be traced back to Pope Pius XIl’s encyclicals Evangelii praecones (June 1951) and Fidei donum (April 1957). Pope John XXIII followed suit with his encyclical Princeps pastorum (November 1959) and his call for papal lay volunteers to Latin America in June

¹⁴Lettres du Pere Lebbe, February 11, 1932, 280.

¹⁵Vincent Thoreau, Le tonnerre qui chante au loin (Brussels: Didier Hatier, 1990), p. 161.

Jean-Paul Wiest,
Former Research Director of the Center for Mission Research and Study at Maryknoll, New York. His primary field of research is the Roman Catholic Church in China, with an emphasis on Sino-Western cultural and religious interactions.
Source: International Bulletin of Missionary Research, January 1999.

See also:

The Little Brothers of the Congregation of St. John the Baptist: Mission, History and Spirituality in the Chinese Context