The Price of a Priest

The leader of a Communist band, holding a twenty-five-year-old Italian Franciscan friar in Eastern Hupeh, has sent a note to the Catholic mission of Hwang-kan demanding a ransom. The outlaws want five hundred army uniforms, one thousand pairs of puttees, twelve watches, five fountain pens—specifying that they must be of German make-1,200 phials of anti-fever injections, and many other kinds of medicine.
Fr. Gratian Leonardelli, the young captive. has been in China, a Fides message states, only since last November. having been ordained at Trent the previous June. Early this summer Reds invaded the district where he was working. Thinking to find safety in Tang-tong, a port on the Blue River. the priest was on his way there and had crossed the lake from Tingshanho when he was seized by a band of Reds waiting for him on the shore, and was carried off by them to their hide-out in the hills.