By Rita McInerney

Loyalty to the Roman Catholic faith was a sure path to prison for many Chinese priests in 1957 when the Communist leaders of the People’s Republic of China established the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) and severed all ties with the pope and the Vatican.

Today, almost 30 years later, with China making overtures to the Western world in trade and cultural affairs, the Red Chinese still are the jailers of native priests and ministers who refused to accept the state religion. Despite the fact that the CCPA has its own hierarchy of prelates and priests who switched loyalties, ordains its own priests and celebrates the Tridentine Mass in the cathedrals and churches that have been reopened, the majority of Chinese Catholics and their priests, like their Protestant brothers and sisters, have gone underground.

Even before the break with the Vatican, priests had been rounded up and imprisoned for continuing their priestly duties in the face of ruthless persecution by the Communists. They were sent to forced labor camps and prisons and subjected to hard labor, torture and solitary confinement.

How many of these native priests remain in prison, how many have died and how many have been “released” but continue under house arrest are statistics hidden behind the thick wall of Chinese Communism. It is certain that some are still imprisoned. The discovery of this tragic truth moved a young Tennessee man, who is not a Catholic, to action in May, 1983.

John Davies, now 27, of Signal Mountain, Tenn., happened to read a news report in the Chattanooga paper about four elderly priests, freed from long prison confinement in 1979, being rearrested, tried after long months in jail, and re-sentenced to prison terms. The article, a New York Times wire story, said four Jesuits, Fathers Vincent Chu, 67; Joseph Chen, 75; Stanislas Chen, 80, and Stephen Chen, 66, were rounded up in a crackdown on underground church activity. They were charged with subversive activities, but Catholic sources said that their real crime was their refusal to submit to the CCPA.

Among untold numbers imprisoned in the 1950s, they had been released in 1979 in the aftermath of the harsh repression of the Cultural Revolution.

In a recent interview with The Georgia Bulletin at his home in Signal Mountain, Davies talked about what he has done since he read about “this terrible violation of human rights.” What he did was organize a grass-roots human rights organization, Free the Fathers, which seeks to raise government and public awareness of the ordeal of the Chinese priests. A one-man volunteer force, he estimates he spends 10 to 15 hours a week on the cause.

From his files, Davies shows copies of letters sent by a State Department official to two members of Congress who had queried the department in response to Free the Fathers correspondents. A letter sent to Cong. Steve Neal, North Carolina Democrat, on Jan. 25, 1984, by W. Tapley Bennett, Jr., then assistant secretary for legislative and intergovernmental affairs, estimates that there are between 60 and 80 Chinese Jesuits imprisoned in Communist China. Tapley repeated that estimate in a Dec. 5, 1984 letter to Sen. Paul Laxalt, Republican from Nevada.

The Amnesty International Report on China: Violation of Human Rights issued in November, 1984, lists four other imprisoned priests along with those named in the newspaper article that first stirred Davies. The other priests are Father Georgia Huang, 66; Father Stanislas Yan, 66; Father Matthew Zhang, 74, and Father Frances Xavier Zhu, (Chu) 68. Two lay Catholics, Joseph Zhu, 52, and Matthew Zhu, 50, brothers of Father Zhu, were arrested at the same time.

According to Amnesty, Father Zhu was sentenced on June 10, 1983, to 12 years of imprisonment and deprivation of civil rights for another three years. Father Zhu had first been arrested in 1953 and was, in fact, still detained in a labor camp in Anhui province when the other priests were arrested in November, 1981. He was tried and sentenced again in 1983 because he continued to carry out religious activities, including saying Mass, in the labor camp. Father Zhu died of natural causes in December, 1983 after 30 years in detention.

The 1985 Amnesty International Report expressed concern over the continuing detention and state of health of “several” elderly Roman Catholic priests who had remained loyal to the Vatican and refused to cooperate with the official CCPA. “Following an official inquiry on religious policy in Beijing since 1979, the authorities announced in October that all prominent religious figures in the capital persecuted during the Cultural Revolution had been rehabilitated and arrangements made for compensation. This greater tolerance did not extend to those Christians who did not adhere either to the official Patriotic Catholic Association or to the Protestant Three-Self Patriotic Movement. Officials in the province of Henan, in particular, reportedly reacted strongly to unofficial religious activity which they referred to as “Christianity fever: and Amnesty International received reports of harassment, and sometimes arrest, of Protestants practicing religion in “house-churches.” There were also reports of the imprisonment of “house-church pastors” and “itinerant preachers.”

Attempts by the Georgia Bulletin to check with the Jesuit and Maryknoll authorities on the situation of the Chinese priests were unsuccessful. Father Edward Malatesta, S.J., who teaches Chinese studies and is director of the Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History at the University of San Francisco, said he was not familiar with the situation. A lay staff member in the China department at Maryknoll, N.Y., referred the writer to the reports of Amnesty International.

Davies says that 650 people from all 50 states belong to Free the Fathers. Most, he said have been recruited through small ads placed in Catholic newspapers including the National Catholic Register, Twin Circle, The Wanderer, and Long Island Catholic, or through occasional wire service articles on the elderly priests.

Besides mailings to members, the State Department, Congress and newspapers, Davies is in touch with advocates for the priests in Europe, Hong Kong and Macau, a Portuguese province in south China. Some of his correspondents in Macau are reluctant to have their names publicized.

He believes there is a need for more outside pressure on the State Department which claims it is working for the priests through quiet diplomacy.

“It is our view that quiet diplomacy hasn’t worked for 30 years. Why should it work now?” There is conflict, he claims between the human rights office at State which feels the cause should be kept before the public, and the China desk which would just as soon forget about the priests. “It would make their job easier in promoting trade. A lot of them would rather see us sell soft drinks and cigarettes to the Chinese than worry about a few elderly priests,” he says.

The China desk has the upper hand, he concedes. “We don’t think the State Department has done very much. They did a lot to get Anatoly Shcharansky released. They could certainly try to get Bishop Ignatius Kung, 86, out of house arrest.”

Bishop Kung was “released” last July 3 after nearly 30 years in jail. The official statement by the CCPA at the time said he was “remorseful” and had promised to sever connections with the Vatican. But Davies says “it’s pretty obvious that Bishop Kung has not joined the Chinese church” and is kept under house arrest. When Geraldine Ferraro visited China last summer and asked to see the bishop she was told he was resting in the mountains, according to Davies.

He shows a copy of China Update, a periodical printed in Belgium, to reinforce his opinion that the aged bishop is not free. An article in the winter issue of Update describes a visit paid to the bishop by Bishop de Costa of Macau last October. All during the visit, the account says, the frail Bishop Kung was surrounded by a “large group of his CCPA protectors.” The two bishops could not talk in private.

Davies says a petition drive begun in January to gather public support for the imprisoned priests is going well and produces a stack of signature-filled petitions. He is hopeful of presenting the petitions to the Chinese ambassador in Washington.

Davies, who describes himself as a “Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp conservative Republican,” doesn’t think the President is doing enough about the jailed Chinese priests. “I asked to meet with him about two years ago and had a letter back from his assistant saying it wasn’t possible.” He doesn’t think the Reagan staff people are knowledgeable about the situation.

Kemp, a member of the Free the Fathers advisory board, introduced the subject at a meeting with the Chinese ambassador last fall. The ambassador, he reported to Davies, became excited since he wasn’t expecting the subject to come up, and said he didn’t want to discuss it.

Davies, with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia, and a master’s in business administration from Wake Forest, says Free the Fathers operates solely on contributions. The organization took in $7,200 last year and “we’re in debt at the moment.”

He has mailed 6,000 information packets to priests across the country; there is a monthly mailing to members which includes a report on latest efforts, and postcards to be mailed to the Secretary of State and to members of Congress from the members' district.

Along with Kemp, the advisory board for Free the Fathers includes Sen. Claiborne Pell, Rhode Island Democrat; Father James Thornton, S.J., a former missionary to China; Bishop James Niedegeses of Nashville, and Sister Grace Vincent Cannon, F.M.S.C., a history professor at Ladycliff College until the college was forced to close in 1981 because of financial problems.

Sister Grace, in a telephone conversation, says she just recently used Davies as an “example of the power of the individual” in talking to a group of high school students. “He deserves a lot of credit.”

(Anyone interested in more information can write to: Free the Fathers, 1120 Applewood Circle, Signal Mountain, TN 37377, or call (615)886-2134).