From June 23 until July 15, 2012 De Paul University successfully hosted twelve priests from China participating in the first Chinese Leadership Initiative.  Among the twelve diocesan priests there was one Chinese Vincentian.  Hebei province, which surrounds but does not include the capital Beijing, has the most Catholics and most priests and sisters of any province and the majority of its dioceses were Vincentian in the old days.

De Paul University collaborated with the Chinese Province of the Congregation of the Mission and the Faith Institute for Cultural Studies (founded by Father John Baptist Zhang in Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China) to give birth to the Chinese Leadership Initiative, responding to the needs and challenges expressed by the priests themselves in a survey in the summer of 2011.

The situation of the priests in China calls for strengthening their relationships with one another, sharing their authority with sisters and lay leaders and incorporating the gifts of the sisters and lay people in building vibrant Christian communities of faith and service.  There’s a missing generation of priests in China – few if any were ordained in the thirty years between 1955 and 1984.  The younger generation is short on mentors.  The priests are often alone in rural areas navigating between the deeply rooted devotional faith of the past and the community-building and missionary vision of Vatican II that came to them twenty-five years after the event.  In spite of the challenges, they are doing remarkably well.

As a program of cultural exchange, mornings in the classroom were balanced with afternoon experiences of church and society.  The De Paul campus became home to them very quickly and the CTA (subway) was their way of getting around the city.  A Columban priest, Father Tom Glennon, with experience in the city, introduced them to night shelters and feeding programs.  They visited Catholic Charities and had a number of on-site visits.  Chinese students helped bridge the language barrier in the early days under the guidance of Dr. Jin Li of the Modern Language Department’s Chinese Studies Program.

They were especially energized by a conversation with a Chicago pastor with 34 years experience, glad to know what was similar and what different.   On three successive Monday evenings, they joined the Vincentian community on campus for dinner and shared their stories with them, which turned out to rekindle the memories of the confreres for the China mission remembering all the American confreres who served there in the 20^th century.  Father Francis Li, the pastor of the St. Therese Chinese Mission Church in Chinatown and a member of the planning committee, stepped up to make them feel at home and showed them where they could buy Chinese noodles!  A suburban Catholic invited them to her home for a cookout.  She and her friends enthusiastically welcomed them and it turned out to be a great afternoon.

There were two special outings.  On Sunday, July 1, Notre Dame University invited them to lunch and a tour on campus, which made an indelible impression on them.  On the following weekend, they went to Washington DC.  The visit to the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on the first afternoon took on the character of a pilgrimage, a special time to pray for the church in China.  They stayed at Theological College and the Daughters of Charity showed them around on Sunday afternoon.

Father Hugh O’Donnell, C.M. was the on-site director.  The input sessions were given by Evelyn and Jim Whitehead, Sister Patricia Bombard, BVM of the “Vincent on Leadership -the Hay Project” at De Paul University, and Dr. Dominic Perri, the founder of Essential Conversations.  Father Richard Preuss, C.M., Father Pawel Wierzbicki, C.M. and Father Joseph Li bridged the language gap through their excellent translations.

The plan is to continue this initiative for the next three years.  Please contact Father Hugh O’Donnell, C.M. for further information or if you would like to support this initiative in any way.  His email is hodonn@gmx.net.

See previous famvin articles on

• OnGoing Formation in China
• Vincentians in China
• Vincentian Family in China celebrates 350th Anniversary of Vincent and Louise