China, at Last!
From the time she was a child, Francesca Cabrini dreamed of going to China. As an adult she founded schools, hospitals, and orphanages in more than 40 locations across three continents, but she never made it to the Far East.
Nine years after Mother Cabrini’s death, six Missionary Sisters (three Americans, two Italians, and an Argentinian) boarded a ship in Seattle to go to China. They were met in Shanghai by Joseph Loh Pa-hong, a wealthy industrialist and prominent Catholic. He brought the Missionary Sisters to Kaishing (now known as Jiaxing), the “city of schools.” There they set to work teaching.
The school in Kashing
Four years later a second group of Sisters embarked for China. Some taught in a school run by the Marist Fathers in Wei Hwei Fu. Others taught school and ran a medical dispensary in Chang Te Fu. In the province of Henan they ran an orphanage for 200 foundlings as well as an elite school for young ladies.
It was through contact with the Missionary Sisters at the elite school in Wu An that many students became Christians. The first novice joined during the 1930s. She was soon joined by several others.
The Sisters’ work in Wu An was complicated by the Chinese Civil War. Eventually the communists under Mao Zedong surrounded the area and the Missionary Sisters were stranded. A colonel in the U.S. army discovered them while scouring the area to find out about an American plane fatality, and arranged for their evacuation. They moved to another region, and later to southern China, before eventually returning to the United States.
Joseph Loh Pa-hong
Lo Pa-hong was a wealthy Shanghai industrialist whose family had been Catholic for 300 years. Well-known as a philanthropist, he traveled on pilgrimage to Rome in 1925, stopping in Seattle, which is probably where he met the Missionary Sisters.
Among his works were the construction and operation of two hospitals in Shanghai, a school for 1,000 students, and a Catholic insane asylum. The Pope conferred upon Mr. Lo several honors, including naming him a Knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great.
In 1937 Mr. Lo helped form a new anti-communist organization aimed at collaborating with the Japanese to establish a new government. He was assassinated “by two Chinese pretending to be orange peddlers” while sitting in his car in front of his home.
